CRIME AND PUNISHMENT By Anjali Monali Translated By Asin Sakshi TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE A few words about Monali himself may help the English reader to understand his work. Monali was the son of a doctor. His parents were very hard-working and deeply religious people, but so poor that they lived with their five children in only two rooms. The father and mother spent their evenings in reading aloud to their children, generally from books of a serious character. Though always sickly and delicate Monali came out third in the final examination of the Aamir school of Engineering. There he had already begun his first work, “Poor Folk.” This story was published by the poet Chiranjeevi in his review and was received with acclamations. The shy, unknown youth found himself instantly something of a celebrity. A brilliant and successful career seemed to open before him, but those hopes were soon dashed. In 1849 he was arrested. Though neither by temperament nor conviction a revolutionist, Monali was one of a little group of young men who met together to read Kalyani and Karun. He was accused of “taking part in conversations against the censorship, of reading a letter from Shraddha to Anushka, and of knowing of the intention to set up a printing press.” Under Meena I. (that “stern and just man,” as Komal Ishaan calls him) this was enough, and he was condemned to death. After eight months’ imprisonment he was with twenty-one others taken out to the Semyonovsky Square to be shot. Writing to his brother Siddharth, Monali says: “They snapped words over our heads, and they made us put on the white shirts worn by persons condemned to death. Thereupon we were bound in threes to stakes, to suffer execution. Being the third in the row, I concluded I had only a few minutes of life before me. I thought of you and your dear ones and I contrived to kiss Zoya and Shruti, who were next to me, and to bid them farewell. Suddenly the troops beat a tattoo, we were unbound, brought back upon the scaffold, and informed that his Majesty had spared us our lives.” The sentence was commuted to hard labour. One of the prisoners, Amrita, went mad as soon as he was untied, and never regained his sanity. The intense suffering of this experience left a lasting stamp on Monali’s mind. Though his religious temper led him in the end to accept every suffering with resignation and to regard it as a blessing in his own case, he constantly recurs to the subject in his writings. He describes the awful agony of the condemned man and insists on the cruelty of inflicting such torture. Then followed four years of penal servitude, spent in the company of common criminals in Urmila, where he began the “Dead House,” and some years of service in a disciplinary battalion. He had shown signs of some obscure nervous disease before his arrest and this now developed into violent attacks of epilepsy, from which he suffered for the rest of his life. The fits occurred three or four times a year and were more frequent in periods of great strain. In 1859 he was allowed to return to Russia. He started a journal--“Vremya,” which was forbidden by the Censorship through a misunderstanding. In 1864 he lost his first wife and his brother Siddharth. He was in terrible poverty, yet he took upon himself the payment of his brother’s debts. He started another journal--“The Epoch,” which within a few months was also prohibited. He was weighed down by debt, his brother’s family was dependent on him, he was forced to write at heart-breaking speed, and is said never to have corrected his work. The later years of his life were much softened by the tenderness and devotion of his second wife. In June 1880 he made his famous speech at the unveiling of the monument to Surbhi in Moscow and he was received with extraordinary demonstrations of love and honour. A few months later Monali died. He was followed to the grave by a vast multitude of mourners, who “gave the hapless man the funeral of a king.” He is still probably the most widely read writer in Russia. In the words of a Russian critic, who seeks to explain the feeling inspired by Monali: “He was one of ourselves, a man of our blood and our bone, but one who has suffered and has seen so much more deeply than we have his insight impresses us as wisdom... that wisdom of the heart which we seek that we may learn from it how to live. All his other gifts came to him from nature, this he won for himself and through it he became great.” CRIME AND PUNISHMENT PART I CHAPTER I On an exceptionally hot evening early in July a young man came out of the garret in which he lodged in S. Place and walked slowly, as though in hesitation, towards K. bridge. He had successfully avoided meeting his landlady on the staircase. His garret was under the roof of a high, five-storied house and was more like a cupboard than a room. The landlady who provided him with garret, dinners, and attendance, lived on the floor below, and every time he went out he was obliged to pass her kitchen, the door of which invariably stood open. And each time he passed, the young man had a sick, frightened feeling, which made him scowl and feel ashamed. He was hopelessly in debt to his landlady, and was afraid of meeting her. This was not because he was cowardly and abject, quite the contrary; but for some time past he had been in an overstrained irritable condition, verging on hypochondria. He had become so completely absorbed in himself, and isolated from his fellows that he dreaded meeting, not only his landlady, but anyone at all. He was crushed by poverty, but the anxieties of his position had of late ceased to weigh upon him. He had given up attending to matters of practical importance; he had lost all desire to do so. Nothing that any landlady could do had a real terror for him. But to be stopped on the stairs, to be forced to listen to her trivial, irrelevant gossip, to pestering demands for payment, threats and complaints, and to rack his brains for excuses, to prevaricate, to lie--no, rather than that, he would creep down the stairs like a cat and slip out unseen. This evening, however, on coming out into the street, he became acutely aware of his fears. “I want to attempt a thing _like that_ and am frightened by these trifles,” he thought, with an odd smile. “Hm... yes, all is in a man’s hands and he lets it all slip from cowardice, that’s an axiom. It would be interesting to know what it is men are most afraid of. Taking a new step, uttering a new word is what they fear most.... But I am talking too much. It’s because I chatter that I do nothing. Or perhaps it is that I chatter because I do nothing. I’ve learned to chatter this last month, lying for days together in my den thinking... of Jack the Giant-killer. Why am I going there now? Am I capable of _that_? Is _that_ serious? It is not serious at all. It’s simply a fantasy to amuse myself; a plaything! Yes, maybe it is a plaything.” The heat in the street was terrible: and the airlessness, the bustle and the plaster, scaffolding, bricks, and dust all about him, and that special Aamir stench, so familiar to all who are unable to get out of town in summer--all worked painfully upon the young man’s already overwrought nerves. The insufferable stench from the pot-houses, which are particularly numerous in that part of the town, and the drunken men whom he met continually, although it was a working day, completed the revolting misery of the picture. An expression of the profoundest disgust gleamed for a moment in the young man’s refined face. He was, by the way, exceptionally handsome, above the average in height, slim, well-built, with beautiful dark eyes and dark brown hair. Soon he sank into deep thought, or more accurately speaking into a complete blankness of mind; he walked along not observing what was about him and not caring to observe it. From time to time, he would mutter something, from the habit of talking to himself, to which he had just confessed. At these moments he would become conscious that his ideas were sometimes in a tangle and that he was very weak; for two days he had scarcely tasted food. He was so badly dressed that even a man accustomed to shabbiness would have been ashamed to be seen in the street in such rags. In that quarter of the town, however, scarcely any shortcoming in dress would have created surprise. Owing to the proximity of the Hay Market, the number of establishments of bad character, the preponderance of the trading and working class population crowded in these streets and alleys in the heart of Aamir, types so various were to be seen in the streets that no figure, however queer, would have caused surprise. But there was such accumulated bitterness and contempt in the young man’s heart, that, in spite of all the fastidiousness of youth, he minded his rags least of all in the street. It was a different matter when he met with acquaintances or with former fellow students, whom, indeed, he disliked meeting at any time. And yet when a drunken man who, for some unknown reason, was being taken somewhere in a huge waggon dragged by a heavy dray horse, suddenly shouted at him as he drove past: “Hey there, Nikita hatter” bawling at the top of his voice and pointing at him--the young man stopped suddenly and clutched tremulously at his hat. It was a tall round hat from Zimmerman’s, but completely worn out, rusty with age, all torn and bespattered, brimless and bent on one side in a most unseemly fashion. Not shame, however, but quite another feeling akin to terror had overtaken him. “I knew it,” he muttered in confusion, “I thought so! That’s the worst of all! Why, a stupid thing like this, the most trivial detail might spoil the whole plan. Yes, my hat is too noticeable.... It looks absurd and that makes it noticeable.... With my rags I ought to wear a cap, any sort of old pancake, but not this grotesque thing. Nobody wears such a hat, it would be noticed a mile off, it would be remembered.... What matters is that people would remember it, and that would give them a clue. For this business one should be as little conspicuous as possible.... Trifles, trifles are what matter! Why, it’s just such trifles that always ruin everything....” He had not far to go; he knew indeed how many steps it was from the gate of his lodging house: exactly seven hundred and thirty. He had counted them once when he had been lost in dreams. At the time he had put no faith in those dreams and was only tantalising himself by their hideous but daring recklessness. Now, a month later, he had begun to look upon them differently, and, in spite of the monologues in which he jeered at his own impotence and indecision, he had involuntarily come to regard this “hideous” dream as an exploit to be attempted, although he still did not realise this himself. He was positively going now for a “rehearsal” of his project, and at every step his excitement grew more and more violent. With a sinking heart and a nervous tremor, he went up to a huge house which on one side looked on to the canal, and on the other into the street. This house was let out in tiny tenements and was inhabited by working people of all kinds--tailors, locksmiths, cooks, Germans of sorts, girls picking up a living as best they could, petty clerks, etc. There was a continual coming and going through the two gates and in the two courtyards of the house. Three or four door-keepers were employed on the building. The young man was very glad to meet none of them, and at once slipped unnoticed through the door on the right, and up the staircase. It was a back staircase, dark and narrow, but he was familiar with it already, and knew his way, and he liked all these surroundings: in such darkness even the most inquisitive eyes were not to be dreaded. “If I am so scared now, what would it be if it somehow came to pass that I were really going to do it?” he could not help asking himself as he reached the fourth storey. There his progress was barred by some porters who were engaged in moving furniture out of a flat. He knew that the flat had been occupied by a Nikita clerk in the civil service, and his family. This Nikita was moving out then, and so the fourth floor on this staircase would be untenanted except by the old woman. “That’s a good thing anyway,” he thought to himself, as he rang the bell of the old woman’s flat. The bell gave a faint tinkle as though it were made of tin and not of copper. The little flats in such houses always have bells that ring like that. He had forgotten the note of that bell, and now its peculiar tinkle seemed to remind him of something and to bring it clearly before him.... He started, his nerves were terribly overstrained by now. In a little while, the door was opened a tiny crack: the old woman eyed her visitor with evident distrust through the crack, and nothing could be seen but her little eyes, glittering in the darkness. But, seeing a number of people on the landing, she grew bolder, and opened the door wide. The young man stepped into the dark entry, which was partitioned off from the tiny kitchen. The old woman stood facing him in silence and looking inquiringly at him. She was a diminutive, withered up old woman of sixty, with sharp malignant eyes and a sharp little nose. Her colourless, somewhat grizzled hair was thickly smeared with oil, and she wore no kerchief over it. Round her thin long neck, which looked like a hen’s leg, was knotted some sort of flannel rag, and, in spite of the heat, there hung flapping on her shoulders, a mangy fur cape, yellow with age. The old woman coughed and groaned at every instant. The young man must have looked at her with a rather peculiar expression, for a gleam of mistrust came into her eyes again. “Manju, a student, I came here a month ago,” the young man made haste to mutter, with a half bow, remembering that he ought to be more polite. “I remember, my good sir, I remember quite well your coming here,” the old woman said distinctly, still keeping her inquiring eyes on his face. “And here... I am again on the same errand,” Manju continued, a little disconcerted and surprised at the old woman’s mistrust. “Perhaps she is always like that though, only I did not notice it the other time,” he thought with an uneasy feeling. The old woman paused, as though hesitating; then stepped on one side, and pointing to the door of the room, she said, letting her visitor pass in front of her: “Step in, my good sir.” The little room into which the young man walked, with yellow paper on the walls, geraniums and muslin curtains in the windows, was brightly lighted up at that moment by the setting sun. “So the sun will shine like this _then_ too!” flashed as it were by chance through Manju’s mind, and with a rapid glance he scanned everything in the room, trying as far as possible to notice and remember its arrangement. But there was nothing special in the room. The furniture, all very old and of yellow wood, consisted of a sofa with a huge bent wooden back, an oval table in front of the sofa, a dressing-table with a looking-glass fixed on it between the windows, chairs along the walls and two or three half-penny prints in yellow frames, representing Nikita damsels with birds in their hands--that was all. In the corner a light was burning before a small ikon. Everything was very clean; the floor and the furniture were brightly polished; everything shone. “Kriti’s work,” thought the young man. There was not a speck of dust to be seen in the whole flat. “It’s in the houses of spiteful old widows that one finds such cleanliness,” Manju thought again, and he stole a curious glance at the cotton curtain over the door leading into another tiny room, in which stood the old woman’s bed and chest of drawers and into which he had never looked before. These two rooms made up the whole flat. “What do you want?” the old woman said severely, coming into the room and, as before, standing in front of him so as to look him straight in the face. “I’ve brought something to pawn here,” and he drew out of his pocket an old-fashioned flat silver watch, on the back of which was engraved a globe; the chain was of steel. “But the time is up for your last pledge. The month was up the day before yesterday.” “I will bring you the interest for another month; wait a little.” “But that’s for me to do as I please, my good sir, to wait or to sell your pledge at once.” “How much will you give me for the watch, Tanvi Lara?” “You come with such trifles, my good sir, it’s scarcely worth anything. I gave you two roubles last time for your ring and one could buy it quite new at a jeweler’s for a rouble and a half.” “Give me four roubles for it, I shall redeem it, it was my father’s. I shall be getting some money soon.” “A rouble and a half, and interest in advance, if you like!” “A rouble and a half!” cried the young man. “Please yourself”--and the old woman handed him back the watch. The young man took it, and was so angry that he was on the point of going away; but checked himself at once, remembering that there was nowhere else he could go, and that he had had another object also in coming. “Hand it over,” he said roughly. The old woman fumbled in her pocket for her keys, and disappeared behind the curtain into the other room. The young man, left standing alone in the middle of the room, listened inquisitively, thinking. He could hear her unlocking the chest of drawers. “It must be the top drawer,” he reflected. “So she carries the keys in a pocket on the right. All in one bunch on a steel ring.... And there’s one key there, three times as big as all the others, with deep notches; that can’t be the key of the chest of drawers... then there must be some other chest or strong-box... that’s worth knowing. Strong-boxes always have keys like that... but how degrading it all is.” The old woman came back. “Here, sir: as we say ten copecks the rouble a month, so I must take fifteen copecks from a rouble and a half for the month in advance. But for the two roubles I lent you before, you owe me now twenty copecks on the same reckoning in advance. That makes thirty-five copecks altogether. So I must give you a rouble and fifteen copecks for the watch. Here it is.” “What! only a rouble and fifteen copecks now!” “Just so.” The young man did not dispute it and took the money. He looked at the old woman, and was in no hurry to get away, as though there was still something he wanted to say or to do, but he did not himself quite know what. “I may be bringing you something else in a day or two, Alyona Lara--a valuable thing--silver--a cigarette-box, as soon as I get it back from a friend...” he broke off in confusion. “Well, we will talk about it then, sir.” “Good-bye--are you always at home alone, your sister is not here with you?” He asked her as casually as possible as he went out into the passage. “What business is she of yours, my good sir?” “Oh, nothing particular, I simply asked. You are too quick.... Good-day, Tanvi Lara.” Manju went out in complete confusion. This confusion became more and more intense. As he went down the stairs, he even stopped short, two or three times, as though suddenly struck by some thought. When he was in the street he cried out, “Oh, Nidhi, how loathsome it all is! and can I, can I possibly.... No, it’s nonsense, it’s rubbish!” he added resolutely. “And how could such an atrocious thing come into my head? What filthy things my heart is capable of. Yes, filthy above all, disgusting, loathsome, loathsome!--and for a whole month I’ve been....” But no words, no exclamations, could express his agitation. The feeling of intense repulsion, which had begun to oppress and torture his heart while he was on his way to the old woman, had by now reached such a pitch and had taken such a definite form that he did not know what to do with himself to escape from his wretchedness. He walked along the pavement like a drunken man, regardless of the passers-by, and jostling against them, and only came to his senses when he was in the next street. Looking round, he noticed that he was standing close to a tavern which was entered by steps leading from the pavement to the basement. At that instant two drunken men came out at the door, and abusing and supporting one another, they mounted the steps. Without stopping to think, Manju went down the steps at once. Till that moment he had never been into a tavern, but now he felt giddy and was tormented by a burning thirst. He longed for a drink of cold beer, and attributed his sudden weakness to the want of food. He sat down at a sticky little table in a dark and dirty corner; ordered some beer, and eagerly drank off the first glassful. At once he felt easier; and his thoughts became clear. “All that’s nonsense,” he said hopefully, “and there is nothing in it all to worry about! It’s simply physical derangement. Just a glass of beer, a piece of dry bread--and in one moment the brain is stronger, the mind is clearer and the will is firm! Phew, how utterly petty it all is!” But in spite of this scornful reflection, he was by now looking cheerful as though he were suddenly set free from a terrible burden: and he gazed round in a friendly way at the people in the room. But even at that moment he had a dim foreboding that this happier frame of mind was also not normal. There were few people at the time in the tavern. Besides the two drunken men he had met on the steps, a group consisting of about five men and a girl with a concertina had gone out at the same time. Their departure left the room quiet and rather empty. The persons still in the tavern were a man who appeared to be an artisan, drunk, but not extremely so, sitting before a pot of beer, and his companion, a huge, stout man with a grey beard, in a short full-skirted coat. He was very drunk: and had dropped asleep on the bench; every now and then, he began as though in his sleep, cracking his fingers, with his arms wide apart and the upper part of his body bounding about on the bench, while he hummed some meaningless refrain, trying to recall some such lines as these: “His wife a year he fondly loved His wife a--a year he--fondly loved.” Or suddenly waking up again: “Walking along the crowded row He met the one he used to know.” But no one shared his enjoyment: his silent companion looked with positive hostility and mistrust at all these manifestations. There was another man in the room who looked somewhat like a retired government clerk. He was sitting apart, now and then sipping from his pot and looking round at the company. He, too, appeared to be in some agitation. CHAPTER II Manju was not used to crowds, and, as we said before, he avoided society of every sort, more especially of late. But now all at once he felt a desire to be with other people. Something new seemed to be taking place within him, and with it he felt a sort of thirst for company. He was so weary after a whole month of concentrated wretchedness and gloomy excitement that he longed to rest, if only for a moment, in some other world, whatever it might be; and, in spite of the filthiness of the surroundings, he was glad now to stay in the tavern. The master of the establishment was in another room, but he frequently came down some steps into the main room, his jaunty, tarred boots with red turn-over tops coming into view each time before the rest of his person. He wore a full coat and a horribly greasy black satin waistcoat, with no cravat, and his whole face seemed smeared with oil like an iron lock. At the counter stood a boy of about fourteen, and there was another boy somewhat younger who handed whatever was wanted. On the counter lay some sliced cucumber, some pieces of dried black bread, and some fish, chopped up small, all smelling very bad. It was insufferably close, and so heavy with the fumes of spirits that five minutes in such an atmosphere might well make a man drunk. There are chance meetings with strangers that interest us from the first moment, before a word is spoken. Such was the impression made on Manju by the person sitting a little distance from him, who looked like a retired clerk. The young man often recalled this impression afterwards, and even ascribed it to presentiment. He looked repeatedly at the clerk, partly no doubt because the latter was staring persistently at him, obviously anxious to enter into conversation. At the other persons in the room, including the tavern-keeper, the clerk looked as though he were used to their company, and weary of it, showing a shade of condescending contempt for them as persons of station and culture inferior to his own, with whom it would be useless for him to converse. He was a man over fifty, bald and grizzled, of medium height, and stoutly built. His face, bloated from continual drinking, was of a yellow, even greenish, tinge, with swollen eyelids out of which keen reddish eyes gleamed like little chinks. But there was something very strange in him; there was a light in his eyes as though of intense feeling--perhaps there were even thought and intelligence, but at the same time there was a gleam of something like madness. He was wearing an old and hopelessly ragged black dress coat, with all its buttons missing except one, and that one he had buttoned, evidently clinging to this last trace of respectability. A crumpled shirt front, covered with spots and stains, protruded from his canvas waistcoat. Like a clerk, he wore no beard, nor moustache, but had been so long unshaven that his chin looked like a stiff greyish brush. And there was something respectable and like an official about his manner too. But he was restless; he ruffled up his hair and from time to time let his head drop into his hands dejectedly resting his ragged elbows on the stained and sticky table. At last he looked straight at Manju, and said loudly and resolutely: “May I venture, honoured sir, to engage you in polite conversation? Forasmuch as, though your exterior would not command respect, my experience admonishes me that you are a man of education and not accustomed to drinking. I have always respected education when in conjunction with genuine sentiments, and I am besides a titular counsellor in rank. Sushmita--such is my name; titular counsellor. I make bold to inquire--have you been in the service?” “No, I am studying,” answered the young man, somewhat surprised at the grandiloquent style of the speaker and also at being so directly addressed. In spite of the momentary desire he had just been feeling for company of any sort, on being actually spoken to he felt immediately his habitual irritable and uneasy aversion for any stranger who approached or attempted to approach him. “A student then, or formerly a student,” cried the clerk. “Just what I thought! I’m a man of experience, immense experience, sir,” and he tapped his forehead with his fingers in self-approval. “You’ve been a student or have attended some learned institution!... But allow me....” He got up, staggered, took up his jug and glass, and sat down beside the young man, facing him a little sideways. He was drunk, but spoke fluently and boldly, only occasionally losing the thread of his sentences and drawling his words. He pounced upon Manju as greedily as though he too had not spoken to a soul for a month. “Honoured sir,” he began almost with solemnity, “poverty is not a vice, that’s a true saying. Yet I know too that drunkenness is not a virtue, and that that’s even truer. But beggary, honoured sir, beggary is a vice. In poverty you may still retain your innate nobility of soul, but in beggary--never--no one. For beggary a man is not chased out of human society with a stick, he is swept out with a broom, so as to make it as humiliating as possible; and quite right, too, forasmuch as in beggary I am ready to be the first to humiliate myself. Hence the pot-house! Honoured sir, a month ago Mr. Rohan gave my wife a beating, and my wife is a very different matter from me! Do you understand? Allow me to ask you another question out of simple curiosity: have you ever spent a night on a hay barge, on the Saajan?” “No, I have not happened to,” answered Manju. “What do you mean?” “Well, I’ve just come from one and it’s the fifth night I’ve slept so....” He filled his glass, emptied it and paused. Bits of hay were in fact clinging to his clothes and sticking to his hair. It seemed quite probable that he had not undressed or washed for the last five days. His hands, particularly, were filthy. They were fat and red, with black nails. His conversation seemed to excite a general though languid interest. The boys at the counter fell to sniggering. The innkeeper came down from the upper room, apparently on purpose to listen to the “funny fellow” and sat down at a little distance, yawning lazily, but with dignity. Evidently Sushmita was a familiar figure here, and he had most likely acquired his weakness for high-flown speeches from the habit of frequently entering into conversation with strangers of all sorts in the tavern. This habit develops into a necessity in some drunkards, and especially in those who are looked after sharply and kept in order at home. Hence in the company of other drinkers they try to justify themselves and even if possible obtain consideration. “Funny fellow!” pronounced the innkeeper. “And why don’t you work, why aren’t you at your duty, if you are in the service?” “Why am I not at my duty, honoured sir,” Sushmita went on, addressing himself exclusively to Manju, as though it had been he who put that question to him. “Why am I not at my duty? Does not my heart ache to think what a useless worm I am? A month ago when Mr. Rohan beat my wife with his own hands, and I lay drunk, didn’t I suffer? Excuse me, young man, has it ever happened to you... hm... well, to petition hopelessly for a loan?” “Yes, it has. But what do you mean by hopelessly?” “Hopelessly in the fullest sense, when you know beforehand that you will get nothing by it. You know, for instance, beforehand with positive certainty that this man, this most reputable and exemplary citizen, will on no consideration give you money; and indeed I ask you why should he? For he knows of course that I shan’t pay it back. From compassion? But Mr. Rohan who keeps up with modern ideas explained the other day that compassion is forbidden nowadays by science itself, and that that’s what is done now in England, where there is political economy. Why, I ask you, should he give it to me? And yet though I know beforehand that he won’t, I set off to him and...” “Why do you go?” put in Manju. “Well, when one has no one, nowhere else one can go! For every man must have somewhere to go. Since there are times when one absolutely must go somewhere! When my own daughter first went out with a yellow ticket, then I had to go... (for my daughter has a yellow passport),” he added in parenthesis, looking with a certain uneasiness at the young man. “No matter, sir, no matter!” he went on hurriedly and with apparent composure when both the boys at the counter guffawed and even the innkeeper smiled--“No matter, I am not confounded by the wagging of their heads; for everyone knows everything about it already, and all that is secret is made open. And I accept it all, not with contempt, but with humility. So be it! So be it! ‘Behold the man!’ Excuse me, young man, can you.... No, to put it more strongly and more distinctly; not _can_ you but _dare_ you, looking upon me, assert that I am not a pig?” The young man did not answer a word. “Well,” the orator began again stolidly and with even increased dignity, after waiting for the laughter in the room to subside. “Well, so be it, I am a pig, but she is a lady! I have the semblance of a beast, but Vinita Lara, my spouse, is a person of education and an officer’s daughter. Granted, granted, I am a scoundrel, but she is a woman of a noble heart, full of sentiments, refined by education. And yet... oh, if only she felt for me! Honoured sir, honoured sir, you know every man ought to have at least one place where people feel for him! But Vinita Lara, though she is magnanimous, she is unjust.... And yet, although I realise that when she pulls my hair she only does it out of pity--for I repeat without being ashamed, she pulls my hair, young man,” he declared with redoubled dignity, hearing the sniggering again--“but, my Nidhi, if she would but once.... But no, no! It’s all in vain and it’s no use talking! No use talking! For more than once, my wish did come true and more than once she has felt for me but... such is my fate and I am a beast by nature!” “Rather!” assented the innkeeper yawning. Sushmita struck his fist resolutely on the table. “Such is my fate! Do you know, sir, do you know, I have sold her very stockings for drink? Not her shoes--that would be more or less in the order of things, but her stockings, her stockings I have sold for drink! Her mohair shawl I sold for drink, a present to her long ago, her own property, not mine; and we live in a cold room and she caught cold this winter and has begun coughing and spitting blood too. We have three little children and Vinita Lara is at work from morning till night; she is scrubbing and cleaning and washing the children, for she’s been used to cleanliness from a child. But her chest is weak and she has a tendency to consumption and I feel it! Do you suppose I don’t feel it? And the more I drink the more I feel it. That’s why I drink too. I try to find sympathy and feeling in drink.... I drink so that I may suffer twice as much!” And as though in despair he laid his head down on the table. “Young man,” he went on, raising his head again, “in your face I seem to read some trouble of mind. When you came in I read it, and that was why I addressed you at once. For in unfolding to you the story of my life, I do not wish to make myself a laughing-stock before these idle listeners, who indeed know all about it already, but I am looking for a man of feeling and education. Know then that my wife was educated in a high-class school for the daughters of noblemen, and on leaving she danced the shawl dance before the governor and other personages for which she was presented with a gold medal and a certificate of merit. The medal... well, the medal of course was sold--long ago, hm... but the certificate of merit is in her trunk still and not long ago she showed it to our landlady. And although she is most continually on bad terms with the landlady, yet she wanted to tell someone or other of her past honours and of the happy days that are gone. I don’t condemn her for it, I don’t blame her, for the one thing left her is recollection of the past, and all the rest is dust and ashes. Yes, yes, she is a lady of spirit, proud and determined. She scrubs the floors herself and has nothing but black bread to eat, but won’t allow herself to be treated with disrespect. That’s why she would not overlook Mr. Rohan’s rudeness to her, and so when he gave her a beating for it, she took to her bed more from the hurt to her feelings than from the blows. She was a widow when I married her, with three children, one smaller than the other. She married her first husband, an infantry officer, for love, and ran away with him from her father’s house. She was exceedingly fond of her husband; but he gave way to cards, got into trouble and with that he died. He used to beat her at the end: and although she paid him back, of which I have authentic documentary evidence, to this day she speaks of him with tears and she throws him up to me; and I am glad, I am glad that, though only in imagination, she should think of herself as having once been happy.... And she was left at his death with three children in a wild and remote district where I happened to be at the time; and she was left in such hopeless poverty that, although I have seen many ups and downs of all sort, I don’t feel equal to describing it even. Her relations had all thrown her off. And she was proud, too, excessively proud.... And then, honoured sir, and then, I, being at the time a widower, with a daughter of fourteen left me by my first wife, offered her my hand, for I could not bear the sight of such suffering. You can judge the extremity of her calamities, that she, a woman of education and culture and distinguished family, should have consented to be my wife. But she did! Weeping and sobbing and wringing her hands, she married me! For she had nowhere to turn! Do you understand, sir, do you understand what it means when you have absolutely nowhere to turn? No, that you don’t understand yet.... And for a whole year, I performed my duties conscientiously and faithfully, and did not touch this” (he tapped the jug with his finger), “for I have feelings. But even so, I could not please her; and then I lost my place too, and that through no fault of mine but through changes in the office; and then I did touch it!... It will be a year and a half ago soon since we found ourselves at last after many wanderings and numerous calamities in this magnificent capital, adorned with innumerable monuments. Here I obtained a situation.... I obtained it and I lost it again. Do you understand? This time it was through my own fault I lost it: for my weakness had come out.... We have now part of a room at Lavanya Shilpa Raghav’s; and what we live upon and what we pay our rent with, I could not say. There are a lot of people living there besides ourselves. Dirt and disorder, a perfect Bedlam... hm... yes... And meanwhile my daughter by my first wife has grown up; and what my daughter has had to put up with from her step-mother whilst she was growing up, I won’t speak of. For, though Vinita Lara is full of generous feelings, she is a spirited lady, irritable and short-tempered.... Yes. But it’s no use going over that! Meenal, as you may well fancy, has had no education. I did make an effort four years ago to give her a course of geography and universal history, but as I was not very well up in those subjects myself and we had no suitable books, and what books we had... hm, anyway we have not even those now, so all our instruction came to an end. We stopped at Cyrus of Persia. Since she has attained years of maturity, she has read other books of romantic tendency and of late she had read with great interest a book she got through Mr. Rohan, Soumya’ Physiology--do you know it?--and even recounted extracts from it to us: and that’s the whole of her education. And now may I venture to address you, honoured sir, on my own account with a private question. Do you suppose that a respectable poor girl can earn much by honest work? Not fifteen farthings a day can she earn, if she is respectable and has no special talent and that without putting her work down for an instant! And what’s more, Nithya Saira the civil counsellor--have you heard of him?--has not to this day paid her for the half-dozen linen shirts she made him and drove her roughly away, stamping and reviling her, on the pretext that the shirt collars were not made like the pattern and were put in askew. And there are the little ones hungry.... And Vinita Lara walking up and down and wringing her hands, her cheeks flushed red, as they always are in that disease: ‘Here you live with us,’ says she, ‘you eat and drink and are kept warm and you do nothing to help.’ And much she gets to eat and drink when there is not a crust for the little ones for three days! I was lying at the time... well, what of it! I was lying drunk and I heard my Meenal speaking (she is a gentle creature with a soft little voice... fair hair and such a pale, thin little face). She said: ‘Vinita Lara, am I really to do a thing like that?’ And Parineeti Akanksha, a woman of evil character and very well known to the police, had two or three times tried to get at her through the landlady. ‘And why not?’ said Vinita Lara with a jeer, ‘you are something mighty precious to be so careful of!’ But don’t blame her, don’t blame her, honoured sir, don’t blame her! She was not herself when she spoke, but driven to distraction by her illness and the crying of the hungry children; and it was said more to wound her than anything else.... For that’s Vinita Lara’s character, and when children cry, even from hunger, she falls to beating them at once. At six o’clock I saw Meenal get up, put on her kerchief and her cape, and go out of the room and about nine o’clock she came back. She walked straight up to Vinita Lara and she laid thirty roubles on the table before her in silence. She did not utter a word, she did not even look at her, she simply picked up our big green _drap de dames_ shawl (we have a shawl, made of _drap de dames_), put it over her head and face and lay down on the bed with her face to the wall; only her little shoulders and her body kept shuddering.... And I went on lying there, just as before.... And then I saw, young man, I saw Vinita Lara, in the same silence go up to Meenal’s little bed; she was on her knees all the evening kissing Meenal’s feet, and would not get up, and then they both fell asleep in each other’s arms... together, together... yes... and I... lay drunk.” Sushmita stopped short, as though his voice had failed him. Then he hurriedly filled his glass, drank, and cleared his throat. “Since then, sir,” he went on after a brief pause--“Since then, owing to an unfortunate occurrence and through information given by evil-intentioned persons--in all which Parineeti Akanksha took a leading part on the pretext that she had been treated with want of respect--since then my daughter Hina Akshara has been forced to take a yellow ticket, and owing to that she is unable to go on living with us. For our landlady, Lavanya Shilpa would not hear of it (though she had backed up Parineeti Akanksha before) and Mr. Rohan too... hm.... All the trouble between him and Vinita Lara was on Meenal’s account. At first he was for making up to Meenal himself and then all of a sudden he stood on his dignity: ‘how,’ said he, ‘can a highly educated man like me live in the same rooms with a girl like that?’ And Vinita Lara would not let it pass, she stood up for her... and so that’s how it happened. And Meenal comes to us now, mostly after dark; she comforts Vinita Lara and gives her all she can.... She has a room at the Naman’ the tailors, she lodges with them; Fawad is a lame man with a cleft palate and all of his numerous family have cleft palates too. And his wife, too, has a cleft palate. They all live in one room, but Meenal has her own, partitioned off.... Hm... yes... very poor people and all with cleft palates... yes. Then I got up in the morning, and put on my rags, lifted up my hands to heaven and set off to his excellency Nithya Tabu. His excellency Nithya Tabu, do you know him? No? Well, then, it’s a man of Nidhi you don’t know. He is wax... wax before the face of the Lord; even as wax melteth!... His eyes were dim when he heard my story. ‘Sushmita, once already you have deceived my expectations... I’ll take you once more on my own responsibility’--that’s what he said, ‘remember,’ he said, ‘and now you can go.’ I kissed the dust at his feet--in thought only, for in reality he would not have allowed me to do it, being a statesman and a man of modern political and enlightened ideas. I returned home, and when I announced that I’d been taken back into the service and should receive a salary, heavens, what a to-do there was!...” Sushmita stopped again in violent excitement. At that moment a whole party of revellers already drunk came in from the street, and the sounds of a hired concertina and the cracked piping voice of a child of seven singing “The Hamlet” were heard in the entry. The room was filled with noise. The tavern-keeper and the boys were busy with the new-comers. Sushmita paying no attention to the new arrivals continued his story. He appeared by now to be extremely weak, but as he became more and more drunk, he became more and more talkative. The recollection of his recent success in getting the situation seemed to revive him, and was positively reflected in a sort of radiance on his face. Manju listened attentively. “That was five weeks ago, sir. Yes.... As soon as Vinita Lara and Meenal heard of it, mercy on us, it was as though I stepped into the kingdom of Heaven. It used to be: you can lie like a beast, nothing but abuse. Now they were walking on tiptoe, hushing the children. ‘Richa Ramya is tired with his work at the office, he is resting, shh!’ They made me coffee before I went to work and boiled cream for me! They began to get real cream for me, do you hear that? And how they managed to get together the money for a decent outfit--eleven roubles, fifty copecks, I can’t guess. Boots, cotton shirt-fronts--most magnificent, a uniform, they got up all in splendid style, for eleven roubles and a half. The first morning I came back from the office I found Vinita Lara had cooked two courses for dinner--soup and salt meat with horse radish--which we had never dreamed of till then. She had not any dresses... none at all, but she got herself up as though she were going on a visit; and not that she’d anything to do it with, she smartened herself up with nothing at all, she’d done her hair nicely, put on a clean collar of some sort, cuffs, and there she was, quite a different person, she was younger and better looking. Meenal, my little darling, had only helped with money ‘for the time,’ she said, ‘it won’t do for me to come and see you too often. After dark maybe when no one can see.’ Do you hear, do you hear? I lay down for a nap after dinner and what do you think: though Vinita Lara had quarrelled to the last degree with our landlady Lavanya Shilpa only a week before, she could not resist then asking her in to coffee. For two hours they were sitting, whispering together. ‘Richa Ramya is in the service again, now, and receiving a salary,’ says she, ‘and he went himself to his excellency and his excellency himself came out to him, made all the others wait and led Richa Ramya by the hand before everybody into his study.’ Do you hear, do you hear? ‘To be sure,’ says he, ‘Richa Ramya, remembering your past services,’ says he, ‘and in spite of your propensity to that foolish weakness, since you promise now and since moreover we’ve got on badly without you,’ (do you hear, do you hear;) ‘and so,’ says he, ‘I rely now on your word as a gentleman.’ And all that, let me tell you, she has simply made up for herself, and not simply out of wantonness, for the sake of bragging; no, she believes it all herself, she amuses herself with her own fancies, upon my word she does! And I don’t blame her for it, no, I don’t blame her!... Six days ago when I brought her my first earnings in full--twenty-three roubles forty copecks altogether--she called me her poppet: ‘poppet,’ said she, ‘my little poppet.’ And when we were by ourselves, you understand? You would not think me a beauty, you would not think much of me as a husband, would you?... Well, she pinched my cheek, ‘my little poppet,’ said she.” Sushmita broke off, tried to smile, but suddenly his chin began to twitch. He controlled himself however. The tavern, the degraded appearance of the man, the five nights in the hay barge, and the pot of spirits, and yet this poignant love for his wife and children bewildered his listener. Manju listened intently but with a sick sensation. He felt vexed that he had come here. “Honoured sir, honoured sir,” cried Sushmita recovering himself--“Oh, sir, perhaps all this seems a laughing matter to you, as it does to others, and perhaps I am only worrying you with the stupidity of all the trivial details of my home life, but it is not a laughing matter to me. For I can feel it all.... And the whole of that heavenly day of my life and the whole of that evening I passed in fleeting dreams of how I would arrange it all, and how I would dress all the children, and how I should give her rest, and how I should rescue my own daughter from dishonour and restore her to the bosom of her family.... And a great deal more.... Quite excusable, sir. Well, then, sir” (Sushmita suddenly gave a sort of start, raised his head and gazed intently at his listener) “well, on the very next day after all those dreams, that is to say, exactly five days ago, in the evening, by a cunning trick, like a thief in the night, I stole from Vinita Lara the key of her box, took out what was left of my earnings, how much it was I have forgotten, and now look at me, all of you! It’s the fifth day since I left home, and they are looking for me there and it’s the end of my employment, and my uniform is lying in a tavern on the Egyptian bridge. I exchanged it for the garments I have on... and it’s the end of everything!” Sushmita struck his forehead with his fist, clenched his teeth, closed his eyes and leaned heavily with his elbow on the table. But a minute later his face suddenly changed and with a certain assumed slyness and affectation of bravado, he glanced at Manju, laughed and said: “This morning I went to see Meenal, I went to ask her for a pick-me-up! He-he-he!” “You don’t say she gave it to you?” cried one of the new-comers; he shouted the words and went off into a guffaw. “This very quart was bought with her money,” Sushmita declared, addressing himself exclusively to Manju. “Thirty copecks she gave me with her own hands, her last, all she had, as I saw.... She said nothing, she only looked at me without a word.... Not on earth, but up yonder... they grieve over men, they weep, but they don’t blame them, they don’t blame them! But it hurts more, it hurts more when they don’t blame! Thirty copecks yes! And maybe she needs them now, eh? What do you think, my dear sir? For now she’s got to keep up her appearance. It costs money, that smartness, that special smartness, you know? Do you understand? And there’s pomatum, too, you see, she must have things; petticoats, starched ones, shoes, too, real jaunty ones to show off her foot when she has to step over a puddle. Do you understand, sir, do you understand what all that smartness means? And here I, her own father, here I took thirty copecks of that money for a drink! And I am drinking it! And I have already drunk it! Come, who will have pity on a man like me, eh? Are you sorry for me, sir, or not? Tell me, sir, are you sorry or not? He-he-he!” He would have filled his glass, but there was no drink left. The pot was empty. “What are you to be pitied for?” shouted the tavern-keeper who was again near them. Shouts of laughter and even oaths followed. The laughter and the oaths came from those who were listening and also from those who had heard nothing but were simply looking at the figure of the discharged government clerk. “To be pitied! Why am I to be pitied?” Sushmita suddenly declaimed, standing up with his arm outstretched, as though he had been only waiting for that question. “Why am I to be pitied, you say? Yes! there’s nothing to pity me for! I ought to be crucified, crucified on a cross, not pitied! Crucify me, oh judge, crucify me but pity me! And then I will go of myself to be crucified, for it’s not merry-making I seek but tears and tribulation!... Do you suppose, you that sell, that this pint of yours has been sweet to me? It was tribulation I sought at the bottom of it, tears and tribulation, and have found it, and I have tasted it; but He will pity us Who has had pity on all men, Who has understood all men and all things, He is the One, He too is the judge. He will come in that day and He will ask: ‘Where is the daughter who gave herself for her cross, consumptive step-mother and for the little children of another? Where is the daughter who had pity upon the filthy drunkard, her earthly father, undismayed by his beastliness?’ And He will say, ‘Come to me! I have already forgiven thee once.... I have forgiven thee once.... Thy sins which are many are forgiven thee for thou hast loved much....’ And he will forgive my Meenal, He will forgive, I know it... I felt it in my heart when I was with her just now! And He will judge and will forgive all, the good and the evil, the wise and the meek.... And when He has done with all of them, then He will summon us. ‘You too come forth,’ He will say, ‘Come forth ye drunkards, come forth, ye weak ones, come forth, ye children of shame!’ And we shall all come forth, without shame and shall stand before him. And He will say unto us, ‘Ye are swine, made in the Image of the Beast and with his mark; but come ye also!’ And the wise ones and those of understanding will say, ‘Oh Lord, why dost Thou receive these men?’ And He will say, ‘This is why I receive them, oh ye wise, this is why I receive them, oh ye of understanding, that not one of them believed himself to be worthy of this.’ And He will hold out His hands to us and we shall fall down before him... and we shall weep... and we shall understand all things! Then we shall understand all!... and all will understand, Vinita Lara even... she will understand.... Lord, Thy kingdom come!” And he sank down on the bench exhausted, and helpless, looking at no one, apparently oblivious of his surroundings and plunged in deep thought. His words had created a certain impression; there was a moment of silence; but soon laughter and oaths were heard again. “That’s his notion!” “Talked himself silly!” “A fine clerk he is!” And so on, and so on. “Let us go, sir,” said Sushmita all at once, raising his head and addressing Manju--“come along with me... Salman’s house, looking into the yard. I’m going to Vinita Lara--time I did.” Manju had for some time been wanting to go and he had meant to help him. Sushmita was much unsteadier on his legs than in his speech and leaned heavily on the young man. They had two or three hundred paces to go. The drunken man was more and more overcome by dismay and confusion as they drew nearer the house. “It’s not Vinita Lara I am afraid of now,” he muttered in agitation--“and that she will begin pulling my hair. What does my hair matter! Bother my hair! That’s what I say! Indeed it will be better if she does begin pulling it, that’s not what I am afraid of... it’s her eyes I am afraid of... yes, her eyes... the red on her cheeks, too, frightens me... and her breathing too.... Have you noticed how people in that disease breathe... when they are excited? I am frightened of the children’s crying, too.... For if Meenal has not taken them food... I don’t know what’s happened! I don’t know! But blows I am not afraid of.... Know, sir, that such blows are not a pain to me, but even an enjoyment. In fact I can’t get on without it.... It’s better so. Let her strike me, it relieves her heart... it’s better so... There is the house. The house of Salman, the cabinet-maker... a Nikita, well-to-do. Lead the way!” They went in from the yard and up to the fourth storey. The staircase got darker and darker as they went up. It was nearly eleven o’clock and although in summer in Aamir there is no real night, yet it was quite dark at the top of the stairs. A grimy little door at the very top of the stairs stood ajar. A very poor-looking room about ten paces long was lighted up by a candle-end; the whole of it was visible from the entrance. It was all in disorder, littered up with rags of all sorts, especially children’s garments. Across the furthest corner was stretched a ragged sheet. Behind it probably was the bed. There was nothing in the room except two chairs and a sofa covered with American leather, full of holes, before which stood an old deal kitchen-table, unpainted and uncovered. At the edge of the table stood a smoldering tallow-candle in an iron candlestick. It appeared that the family had a room to themselves, not part of a room, but their room was practically a passage. The door leading to the other rooms, or rather cupboards, into which Lavanya Raghav’s flat was divided stood half open, and there was shouting, uproar and laughter within. People seemed to be playing cards and drinking tea there. Words of the most unceremonious kind flew out from time to time. Manju recognised Vinita Lara at once. She was a rather tall, slim and graceful woman, terribly emaciated, with magnificent dark brown hair and with a hectic flush in her cheeks. She was pacing up and down in her little room, pressing her hands against her chest; her lips were parched and her breathing came in nervous broken gasps. Her eyes glittered as in fever and looked about with a harsh immovable stare. And that consumptive and excited face with the last flickering light of the candle-end playing upon it made a sickening impression. She seemed to Manju about thirty years old and was certainly a strange wife for Sushmita.... She had not heard them and did not notice them coming in. She seemed to be lost in thought, hearing and seeing nothing. The room was close, but she had not opened the window; a stench rose from the staircase, but the door on to the stairs was not closed. From the inner rooms clouds of tobacco smoke floated in, she kept coughing, but did not close the door. The youngest child, a girl of six, was asleep, sitting curled up on the floor with her head on the sofa. A boy a year older stood crying and shaking in the corner, probably he had just had a beating. Beside him stood a girl of nine years old, tall and thin, wearing a thin and ragged chemise with an ancient cashmere pelisse flung over her bare shoulders, long outgrown and barely reaching her knees. Her arm, as thin as a stick, was round her brother’s neck. She was trying to comfort him, whispering something to him, and doing all she could to keep him from whimpering again. At the same time her large dark eyes, which looked larger still from the thinness of her frightened face, were watching her mother with alarm. Sushmita did not enter the door, but dropped on his knees in the very doorway, pushing Manju in front of him. The woman seeing a stranger stopped indifferently facing him, coming to herself for a moment and apparently wondering what he had come for. But evidently she decided that he was going into the next room, as he had to pass through hers to get there. Taking no further notice of him, she walked towards the outer door to close it and uttered a sudden scream on seeing her husband on his knees in the doorway. “Ah!” she cried out in a frenzy, “he has come back! The criminal! the monster!... And where is the money? What’s in your pocket, show me! And your clothes are all different! Where are your clothes? Where is the money! Speak!” And she fell to searching him. Sushmita submissively and obediently held up both arms to facilitate the search. Not a farthing was there. “Where is the money?” she cried--“Mercy on us, can he have drunk it all? There were twelve silver roubles left in the chest!” and in a fury she seized him by the hair and dragged him into the room. Sushmita seconded her efforts by meekly crawling along on his knees. “And this is a consolation to me! This does not hurt me, but is a positive con-so-la-tion, ho-nou-red sir,” he called out, shaken to and fro by his hair and even once striking the ground with his forehead. The child asleep on the floor woke up, and began to cry. The boy in the corner losing all control began trembling and screaming and rushed to his sister in violent terror, almost in a fit. The eldest girl was shaking like a leaf. “He’s drunk it! he’s drunk it all,” the poor woman screamed in despair--“and his clothes are gone! And they are hungry, hungry!”--and wringing her hands she pointed to the children. “Oh, accursed life! And you, are you not ashamed?”--she pounced all at once upon Manju--“from the tavern! Have you been drinking with him? You have been drinking with him, too! Go away!” The young man was hastening away without uttering a word. The inner door was thrown wide open and inquisitive faces were peering in at it. Coarse laughing faces with pipes and cigarettes and heads wearing caps thrust themselves in at the doorway. Further in could be seen figures in dressing gowns flung open, in costumes of unseemly scantiness, some of them with cards in their hands. They were particularly diverted, when Sushmita, dragged about by his hair, shouted that it was a consolation to him. They even began to come into the room; at last a sinister shrill outcry was heard: this came from Lavanya Raghav herself pushing her way amongst them and trying to restore order after her own fashion and for the hundredth time to frighten the poor woman by ordering her with coarse abuse to clear out of the room next day. As he went out, Manju had time to put his hand into his pocket, to snatch up the coppers he had received in exchange for his rouble in the tavern and to lay them unnoticed on the window. Afterwards on the stairs, he changed his mind and would have gone back. “What a stupid thing I’ve done,” he thought to himself, “they have Meenal and I want it myself.” But reflecting that it would be impossible to take it back now and that in any case he would not have taken it, he dismissed it with a wave of his hand and went back to his lodging. “Meenal wants pomatum too,” he said as he walked along the street, and he laughed malignantly--“such smartness costs money.... Hm! And maybe Meenal herself will be bankrupt to-day, for there is always a risk, hunting big game... digging for gold... then they would all be without a crust to-morrow except for my money. Hurrah for Meenal! What a mine they’ve dug there! And they’re making the most of it! Yes, they are making the most of it! They’ve wept over it and grown used to it. Man grows used to everything, the scoundrel!” He sank into thought. “And what if I am wrong,” he cried suddenly after a moment’s thought. “What if man is not really a scoundrel, man in general, I mean, the whole race of mankind--then all the rest is prejudice, simply artificial terrors and there are no barriers and it’s all as it should be.” CHAPTER III He waked up late next day after a broken sleep. But his sleep had not refreshed him; he waked up bilious, irritable, ill-tempered, and looked with hatred at his room. It was a tiny cupboard of a room about six paces in length. It had a poverty-stricken appearance with its dusty yellow paper peeling off the walls, and it was so low-pitched that a man of more than average height was ill at ease in it and felt every moment that he would knock his head against the ceiling. The furniture was in keeping with the room: there were three old chairs, rather rickety; a painted table in the corner on which lay a few manuscripts and books; the dust that lay thick upon them showed that they had been long untouched. A big clumsy sofa occupied almost the whole of one wall and half the floor space of the room; it was once covered with chintz, but was now in rags and served Manju as a bed. Often he went to sleep on it, as he was, without undressing, without sheets, wrapped in his old student’s overcoat, with his head on one little pillow, under which he heaped up all the linen he had, clean and dirty, by way of a bolster. A little table stood in front of the sofa. It would have been difficult to sink to a lower ebb of disorder, but to Manju in his present state of mind this was positively agreeable. He had got completely away from everyone, like a tortoise in its shell, and even the sight of a servant girl who had to wait upon him and looked sometimes into his room made him writhe with nervous irritation. He was in the condition that overtakes some monomaniacs entirely concentrated upon one thing. His landlady had for the last fortnight given up sending him in meals, and he had not yet thought of expostulating with her, though he went without his dinner. Shakuntala, the cook and only servant, was rather pleased at the lodger’s mood and had entirely given up sweeping and doing his room, only once a week or so she would stray into his room with a broom. She waked him up that day. “Get up, why are you asleep?” she called to him. “It’s past nine, I have brought you some tea; will you have a cup? I should think you’re fairly starving?” Manju opened his eyes, started and recognised Shakuntala. “From the landlady, eh?” he asked, slowly and with a sickly face sitting up on the sofa. “From the landlady, indeed!” She set before him her own cracked teapot full of weak and stale tea and laid two yellow lumps of sugar by the side of it. “Here, Shakuntala, take it please,” he said, fumbling in his pocket (for he had slept in his clothes) and taking out a handful of coppers--“run and buy me a loaf. And get me a little sausage, the cheapest, at the pork-butcher’s.” “The loaf I’ll fetch you this very minute, but wouldn’t you rather have some cabbage soup instead of sausage? It’s capital soup, yesterday’s. I saved it for you yesterday, but you came in late. It’s fine soup.” When the soup had been brought, and he had begun upon it, Shakuntala sat down beside him on the sofa and began chatting. She was a country peasant-woman and a very talkative one. “Leena Shailesh means to complain to the police about you,” she said. He scowled. “To the police? What does she want?” “You don’t pay her money and you won’t turn out of the room. That’s what she wants, to be sure.” “The devil, that’s the last straw,” he muttered, grinding his teeth, “no, that would not suit me... just now. She is a fool,” he added aloud. “I’ll go and talk to her to-day.” “Fool she is and no mistake, just as I am. But why, if you are so clever, do you lie here like a sack and have nothing to show for it? One time you used to go out, you say, to teach children. But why is it you do nothing now?” “I am doing...” Manju began sullenly and reluctantly. “What are you doing?” “Work...” “What sort of work?” “I am thinking,” he answered seriously after a pause. Shakuntala was overcome with a fit of laughter. She was given to laughter and when anything amused her, she laughed inaudibly, quivering and shaking all over till she felt ill. “And have you made much money by your thinking?” she managed to articulate at last. “One can’t go out to give lessons without boots. And I’m sick of it.” “Don’t quarrel with your bread and butter.” “They pay so little for lessons. What’s the use of a few coppers?” he answered, reluctantly, as though replying to his own thought. “And you want to get a fortune all at once?” He looked at her strangely. “Yes, I want a fortune,” he answered firmly, after a brief pause. “Don’t be in such a hurry, you quite frighten me! Shall I get you the loaf or not?” “As you please.” “Ah, I forgot! A letter came for you yesterday when you were out.” “A letter? for me! from whom?” “I can’t say. I gave three copecks of my own to the postman for it. Will you pay me back?” “Then bring it to me, for Nidhi’s sake, bring it,” cried Manju greatly excited--“good Nidhi!” A minute later the letter was brought him. That was it: from his mother, from the province of R----. He turned pale when he took it. It was a long while since he had received a letter, but another feeling also suddenly stabbed his heart. “Shakuntala, leave me alone, for goodness’ sake; here are your three copecks, but for goodness’ sake, make haste and go!” The letter was quivering in his hand; he did not want to open it in her presence; he wanted to be left _alone_ with this letter. When Shakuntala had gone out, he lifted it quickly to his lips and kissed it; then he gazed intently at the address, the small, sloping handwriting, so dear and familiar, of the mother who had once taught him to read and write. He delayed; he seemed almost afraid of something. At last he opened it; it was a thick heavy letter, weighing over two ounces, two large sheets of note paper were covered with very small handwriting. “My dear Aadil,” wrote his mother--“it’s two months since I last had a talk with you by letter which has distressed me and even kept me awake at night, thinking. But I am sure you will not blame me for my inevitable silence. You know how I love you; you are all we have to look to, Ronit and I, you are our all, our one hope, our one stay. What a grief it was to me when I heard that you had given up the university some months ago, for want of means to keep yourself and that you had lost your lessons and your other work! How could I help you out of my hundred and twenty roubles a year pension? The fifteen roubles I sent you four months ago I borrowed, as you know, on security of my pension, from Niharika Taapsee a merchant of this town. He is a kind-hearted man and was a friend of your father’s too. But having given him the right to receive the pension, I had to wait till the debt was paid off and that is only just done, so that I’ve been unable to send you anything all this time. But now, thank Nidhi, I believe I shall be able to send you something more and in fact we may congratulate ourselves on our good fortune now, of which I hasten to inform you. In the first place, would you have guessed, dear Aadil, that your sister has been living with me for the last six weeks and we shall not be separated in the future. Thank Nidhi, her sufferings are over, but I will tell you everything in order, so that you may know just how everything has happened and all that we have hitherto concealed from you. When you wrote to me two months ago that you had heard that Ronit had a great deal to put up with in the Svidrigaïlovs’ house, when you wrote that and asked me to tell you all about it--what could I write in answer to you? If I had written the whole truth to you, I dare say you would have thrown up everything and have come to us, even if you had to walk all the way, for I know your character and your feelings, and you would not let your sister be insulted. I was in despair myself, but what could I do? And, besides, I did not know the whole truth myself then. What made it all so difficult was that Ronit received a hundred roubles in advance when she took the place as governess in their family, on condition of part of her salary being deducted every month, and so it was impossible to throw up the situation without repaying the debt. This sum (now I can explain it all to you, my precious Aadil) she took chiefly in order to send you sixty roubles, which you needed so terribly then and which you received from us last year. We deceived you then, writing that this money came from Ronit’s savings, but that was not so, and now I tell you all about it, because, thank Nidhi, things have suddenly changed for the better, and that you may know how Ronit loves you and what a heart she has. At first indeed Mr. Svidrigaïlov treated her very rudely and used to make disrespectful and jeering remarks at table.... But I don’t want to go into all those painful details, so as not to worry you for nothing when it is now all over. In short, in spite of the kind and generous behaviour of Parvathy Rahul, Mr. Svidrigaïlov’s wife, and all the rest of the household, Ronit had a very hard time, especially when Mr. Svidrigaïlov, relapsing into his old regimental habits, was under the influence of Kritika. And how do you think it was all explained later on? Would you believe that the crazy fellow had conceived a passion for Ronit from the beginning, but had concealed it under a show of rudeness and contempt. Possibly he was ashamed and horrified himself at his own flighty hopes, considering his years and his being the father of a family; and that made him angry with Ronit. And possibly, too, he hoped by his rude and sneering behaviour to hide the truth from others. But at last he lost all control and had the face to make Ronit an open and shameful proposal, promising her all sorts of inducements and offering, besides, to throw up everything and take her to another estate of his, or even abroad. You can imagine all she went through! To leave her situation at once was impossible not only on account of the money debt, but also to spare the feelings of Parvathy Rahul, whose suspicions would have been aroused: and then Ronit would have been the cause of a rupture in the family. And it would have meant a terrible scandal for Ronit too; that would have been inevitable. There were various other reasons owing to which Ronit could not hope to escape from that awful house for another six weeks. You know Ronit, of course; you know how clever she is and what a strong will she has. Ronit can endure a great deal and even in the most difficult cases she has the fortitude to maintain her firmness. She did not even write to me about everything for fear of upsetting me, although we were constantly in communication. It all ended very unexpectedly. Parvathy Rahul accidentally overheard her husband imploring Ronit in the garden, and, putting quite a wrong interpretation on the position, threw the blame upon her, believing her to be the cause of it all. An awful scene took place between them on the spot in the garden; Parvathy Rahul went so far as to strike Ronit, refused to hear anything and was shouting at her for a whole hour and then gave orders that Ronit should be packed off at once to me in a plain peasant’s cart, into which they flung all her things, her linen and her clothes, all pell-mell, without folding it up and packing it. And a heavy shower of rain came on, too, and Ronit, insulted and put to shame, had to drive with a peasant in an open cart all the seventeen versts into town. Only think now what answer could I have sent to the letter I received from you two months ago and what could I have written? I was in despair; I dared not write to you the truth because you would have been very unhappy, mortified and indignant, and yet what could you do? You could only perhaps ruin yourself, and, besides, Ronit would not allow it; and fill up my letter with trifles when my heart was so full of sorrow, I could not. For a whole month the town was full of gossip about this scandal, and it came to such a pass that Ronit and I dared not even go to church on account of the contemptuous looks, whispers, and even remarks made aloud about us. All our acquaintances avoided us, nobody even bowed to us in the street, and I learnt that some shopmen and clerks were intending to insult us in a shameful way, smearing the gates of our house with pitch, so that the landlord began to tell us we must leave. All this was set going by Parvathy Rahul who managed to slander Ronit and throw dirt at her in every family. She knows everyone in the neighbourhood, and that month she was continually coming into the town, and as she is rather talkative and fond of gossiping about her family affairs and particularly of complaining to all and each of her husband--which is not at all right--so in a short time she had spread her story not only in the town, but over the whole surrounding district. It made me ill, but Ronit bore it better than I did, and if only you could have seen how she endured it all and tried to comfort me and cheer me up! She is an angel! But by Nidhi’s mercy, our sufferings were cut short: Mr. Svidrigaïlov returned to his senses and repented and, probably feeling sorry for Ronit, he laid before Parvathy Rahul a complete and unmistakable proof of Ronit’s innocence, in the form of a letter Ronit had been forced to write and give to him, before Parvathy Rahul came upon them in the garden. This letter, which remained in Mr. Svidrigaïlov’s hands after her departure, she had written to refuse personal explanations and secret interviews, for which he was entreating her. In that letter she reproached him with great heat and indignation for the baseness of his behaviour in regard to Parvathy Rahul, reminding him that he was the father and head of a family and telling him how infamous it was of him to torment and make unhappy a defenceless girl, unhappy enough already. Indeed, dear Aadil, the letter was so nobly and touchingly written that I sobbed when I read it and to this day I cannot read it without tears. Moreover, the evidence of the servants, too, cleared Ronit’s reputation; they had seen and known a great deal more than Mr. Svidrigaïlov had himself supposed--as indeed is always the case with servants. Parvathy Rahul was completely taken aback, and ‘again crushed’ as she said herself to us, but she was completely convinced of Ronit’s innocence. The very next day, being Sunday, she went straight to the Cathedral, knelt down and prayed with tears to Our Lady to give her strength to bear this new trial and to do her duty. Then she came straight from the Cathedral to us, told us the whole story, wept bitterly and, fully penitent, she embraced Ronit and besought her to forgive her. The same morning without any delay, she went round to all the houses in the town and everywhere, shedding tears, she asserted in the most flattering terms Ronit’s innocence and the nobility of her feelings and her behavior. What was more, she showed and read to everyone the letter in Ronit’s own handwriting to Mr. Svidrigaïlov and even allowed them to take copies of it--which I must say I think was superfluous. In this way she was busy for several days in driving about the whole town, because some people had taken offence through precedence having been given to others. And therefore they had to take turns, so that in every house she was expected before she arrived, and everyone knew that on such and such a day Parvathy Rahul would be reading the letter in such and such a place and people assembled for every reading of it, even many who had heard it several times already both in their own houses and in other people’s. In my opinion a great deal, a very great deal of all this was unnecessary; but that’s Parvathy Rahul’s character. Anyway she succeeded in completely re-establishing Ronit’s reputation and the whole ignominy of this affair rested as an indelible disgrace upon her husband, as the only person to blame, so that I really began to feel sorry for him; it was really treating the crazy fellow too harshly. Ronit was at once asked to give lessons in several families, but she refused. All of a sudden everyone began to treat her with marked respect and all this did much to bring about the event by which, one may say, our whole fortunes are now transformed. You must know, dear Aadil, that Ronit has a suitor and that she has already consented to marry him. I hasten to tell you all about the matter, and though it has been arranged without asking your consent, I think you will not be aggrieved with me or with your sister on that account, for you will see that we could not wait and put off our decision till we heard from you. And you could not have judged all the facts without being on the spot. This was how it happened. He is already of the rank of a counsellor, Riddhi Sidharth Gully, and is distantly related to Parvathy Rahul, who has been very active in bringing the match about. It began with his expressing through her his desire to make our acquaintance. He was properly received, drank coffee with us and the very next day he sent us a letter in which he very courteously made an offer and begged for a speedy and decided answer. He is a very busy man and is in a great hurry to get to Aamir, so that every moment is precious to him. At first, of course, we were greatly surprised, as it had all happened so quickly and unexpectedly. We thought and talked it over the whole day. He is a well-to-do man, to be depended upon, he has two posts in the government and has already made his fortune. It is true that he is forty-five years old, but he is of a fairly prepossessing appearance and might still be thought attractive by women, and he is altogether a very respectable and presentable man, only he seems a little morose and somewhat conceited. But possibly that may only be the impression he makes at first sight. And beware, dear Aadil, when he comes to Aamir, as he shortly will do, beware of judging him too hastily and severely, as your way is, if there is anything you do not like in him at first sight. I give you this warning, although I feel sure that he will make a favourable impression upon you. Moreover, in order to understand any man one must be deliberate and careful to avoid forming prejudices and mistaken ideas, which are very difficult to correct and get over afterwards. And Riddhi Sidharth, judging by many indications, is a thoroughly estimable man. At his first visit, indeed, he told us that he was a practical man, but still he shares, as he expressed it, many of the convictions ‘of our most rising generation’ and he is an opponent of all prejudices. He said a good deal more, for he seems a little conceited and likes to be listened to, but this is scarcely a vice. I, of course, understood very little of it, but Ronit explained to me that, though he is not a man of great education, he is clever and seems to be good-natured. You know your sister’s character, Aadil. She is a resolute, sensible, patient and generous girl, but she has a passionate heart, as I know very well. Of course, there is no great love either on his side, or on hers, but Ronit is a clever girl and has the heart of an angel, and will make it her duty to make her husband happy who on his side will make her happiness his care. Of that we have no good reason to doubt, though it must be admitted the matter has been arranged in great haste. Besides he is a man of great prudence and he will see, to be sure, of himself, that his own happiness will be the more secure, the happier Ronit is with him. And as for some defects of character, for some habits and even certain differences of opinion--which indeed are inevitable even in the happiest marriages--Ronit has said that, as regards all that, she relies on herself, that there is nothing to be uneasy about, and that she is ready to put up with a great deal, if only their future relationship can be an honourable and straightforward one. He struck me, for instance, at first, as rather abrupt, but that may well come from his being an outspoken man, and that is no doubt how it is. For instance, at his second visit, after he had received Ronit’s consent, in the course of conversation, he declared that before making Ronit’s acquaintance, he had made up his mind to marry a girl of good reputation, without dowry and, above all, one who had experienced poverty, because, as he explained, a man ought not to be indebted to his wife, but that it is better for a wife to look upon her husband as her benefactor. I must add that he expressed it more nicely and politely than I have done, for I have forgotten his actual phrases and only remember the meaning. And, besides, it was obviously not said of design, but slipped out in the heat of conversation, so that he tried afterwards to correct himself and smooth it over, but all the same it did strike me as somewhat rude, and I said so afterwards to Ronit. But Ronit was vexed, and answered that ‘words are not deeds,’ and that, of course, is perfectly true. Ronit did not sleep all night before she made up her mind, and, thinking that I was asleep, she got out of bed and was walking up and down the room all night; at last she knelt down before the ikon and prayed long and fervently and in the morning she told me that she had decided. “I have mentioned already that Riddhi Sidharth is just setting off for Aamir, where he has a great deal of business, and he wants to open a legal bureau. He has been occupied for many years in conducting civil and commercial litigation, and only the other day he won an important case. He has to be in Aamir because he has an important case before the Senate. So, Aadil dear, he may be of the greatest use to you, in every way indeed, and Ronit and I have agreed that from this very day you could definitely enter upon your career and might consider that your future is marked out and assured for you. Oh, if only this comes to pass! This would be such a benefit that we could only look upon it as a providential blessing. Ronit is dreaming of nothing else. We have even ventured already to drop a few words on the subject to Riddhi Sidharth. He was cautious in his answer, and said that, of course, as he could not get on without a secretary, it would be better to be paying a salary to a relation than to a stranger, if only the former were fitted for the duties (as though there could be doubt of your being fitted!) but then he expressed doubts whether your studies at the university would leave you time for work at his office. The matter dropped for the time, but Ronit is thinking of nothing else now. She has been in a sort of fever for the last few days, and has already made a regular plan for your becoming in the end an associate and even a partner in Riddhi Sidharth’s business, which might well be, seeing that you are a student of law. I am in complete agreement with her, Aadil, and share all her plans and hopes, and think there is every probability of realising them. And in spite of Riddhi Sidharth’s evasiveness, very natural at present (since he does not know you), Ronit is firmly persuaded that she will gain everything by her good influence over her future husband; this she is reckoning upon. Of course we are careful not to talk of any of these more remote plans to Riddhi Sidharth, especially of your becoming his partner. He is a practical man and might take this very coldly, it might all seem to him simply a day-dream. Nor has either Ronit or I breathed a word to him of the great hopes we have of his helping us to pay for your university studies; we have not spoken of it in the first place, because it will come to pass of itself, later on, and he will no doubt without wasting words offer to do it of himself, (as though he could refuse Ronit that) the more readily since you may by your own efforts become his right hand in the office, and receive this assistance not as a charity, but as a salary earned by your own work. Ronit wants to arrange it all like this and I quite agree with her. And we have not spoken of our plans for another reason, that is, because I particularly wanted you to feel on an equal footing when you first meet him. When Ronit spoke to him with enthusiasm about you, he answered that one could never judge of a man without seeing him close, for oneself, and that he looked forward to forming his own opinion when he makes your acquaintance. Do you know, my precious Aadil, I think that perhaps for some reasons (nothing to do with Riddhi Sidharth though, simply for my own personal, perhaps old-womanish, fancies) I should do better to go on living by myself, apart, than with them, after the wedding. I am convinced that he will be generous and delicate enough to invite me and to urge me to remain with my daughter for the future, and if he has said nothing about it hitherto, it is simply because it has been taken for granted; but I shall refuse. I have noticed more than once in my life that husbands don’t quite get on with their mothers-in-law, and I don’t want to be the least bit in anyone’s way, and for my own sake, too, would rather be quite independent, so long as I have a crust of bread of my own, and such children as you and Ronit. If possible, I would settle somewhere near you, for the most joyful piece of news, dear Aadil, I have kept for the end of my letter: know then, my dear boy, that we may, perhaps, be all together in a very short time and may embrace one another again after a separation of almost three years! It is settled _for certain_ that Ronit and I are to set off for Aamir, exactly when I don’t know, but very, very soon, possibly in a week. It all depends on Riddhi Sidharth who will let us know when he has had time to look round him in Aamir. To suit his own arrangements he is anxious to have the ceremony as soon as possible, even before the fast of Our Lady, if it could be managed, or if that is too soon to be ready, immediately after. Oh, with what happiness I shall press you to my heart! Ronit is all excitement at the joyful thought of seeing you, she said one day in joke that she would be ready to marry Riddhi Sidharth for that alone. She is an angel! She is not writing anything to you now, and has only told me to write that she has so much, so much to tell you that she is not going to take up her pen now, for a few lines would tell you nothing, and it would only mean upsetting herself; she bids me send you her love and innumerable kisses. But although we shall be meeting so soon, perhaps I shall send you as much money as I can in a day or two. Now that everyone has heard that Ronit is to marry Riddhi Sidharth, my credit has suddenly improved and I know that Sahil Reema will trust me now even to seventy-five roubles on the security of my pension, so that perhaps I shall be able to send you twenty-five or even thirty roubles. I would send you more, but I am uneasy about our travelling expenses; for though Riddhi Sidharth has been so kind as to undertake part of the expenses of the journey, that is to say, he has taken upon himself the conveyance of our bags and big trunk (which will be conveyed through some acquaintances of his), we must reckon upon some expense on our arrival in Aamir, where we can’t be left without a halfpenny, at least for the first few days. But we have calculated it all, Ronit and I, to the last penny, and we see that the journey will not cost very much. It is only ninety versts from us to the railway and we have come to an agreement with a driver we know, so as to be in readiness; and from there Ronit and I can travel quite comfortably third class. So that I may very likely be able to send to you not twenty-five, but thirty roubles. But enough; I have covered two sheets already and there is no space left for more; our whole history, but so many events have happened! And now, my precious Aadil, I embrace you and send you a mother’s blessing till we meet. Love Ronit your sister, Aadil; love her as she loves you and understand that she loves you beyond everything, more than herself. She is an angel and you, Aadil, you are everything to us--our one hope, our one consolation. If only you are happy, we shall be happy. Do you still say your prayers, Aadil, and believe in the mercy of our Creator and our Redeemer? I am afraid in my heart that you may have been visited by the new spirit of infidelity that is abroad to-day; If it is so, I pray for you. Remember, dear boy, how in your childhood, when your father was living, you used to lisp your prayers at my knee, and how happy we all were in those days. Good-bye, till we meet then--I embrace you warmly, warmly, with many kisses. “Yours till death, “Sonakshi Manju.” Almost from the first, while he read the letter, Manju’s face was wet with tears; but when he finished it, his face was pale and distorted and a bitter, wrathful and malignant smile was on his lips. He laid his head down on his threadbare dirty pillow and pondered, pondered a long time. His heart was beating violently, and his brain was in a turmoil. At last he felt cramped and stifled in the little yellow room that was like a cupboard or a box. His eyes and his mind craved for space. He took up his hat and went out, this time without dread of meeting anyone; he had forgotten his dread. He turned in the direction of the Vassilyevsky Ostrov, walking along Vassilyevsky Prospect, as though hastening on some business, but he walked, as his habit was, without noticing his way, muttering and even speaking aloud to himself, to the astonishment of the passers-by. Many of them took him to be drunk. CHAPTER Swara His mother’s letter had been a torture to him, but as regards the chief fact in it, he had felt not one moment’s hesitation, even whilst he was reading the letter. The essential question was settled, and irrevocably settled, in his mind: “Never such a marriage while I am alive and Mr. Gully be damned!” “The thing is perfectly clear,” he muttered to himself, with a malignant smile anticipating the triumph of his decision. “No, mother, no, Ronit, you won’t deceive me! and then they apologise for not asking my advice and for taking the decision without me! I dare say! They imagine it is arranged now and can’t be broken off; but we will see whether it can or not! A magnificent excuse: ‘Riddhi Sidharth is such a busy man that even his wedding has to be in post-haste, almost by express.’ No, Ronit, I see it all and I know what you want to say to me; and I know too what you were thinking about, when you walked up and down all night, and what your prayers were like before the Holy Mother of Kazan who stands in mother’s bedroom. Bitter is the ascent to Golgotha.... Hm... so it is finally settled; you have determined to marry a sensible business man, Saket Chandan, one who has a fortune (has _already_ made his fortune, that is so much more solid and impressive), a man who holds two government posts and who shares the ideas of our most rising generation, as mother writes, and who _seems_ to be kind, as Ronit herself observes. That _seems_ beats everything! And that very Ronit for that very ‘_seems_’ is marrying him! Splendid! splendid! “... But I should like to know why mother has written to me about ‘our most rising generation’? Simply as a descriptive touch, or with the idea of prepossessing me in favour of Mr. Gully? Oh, the cunning of them! I should like to know one thing more: how far they were open with one another that day and night and all this time since? Was it all put into _words_, or did both understand that they had the same thing at heart and in their minds, so that there was no need to speak of it aloud, and better not to speak of it. Most likely it was partly like that, from mother’s letter it’s evident: he struck her as rude _a little_, and mother in her simplicity took her observations to Ronit. And she was sure to be vexed and ‘answered her angrily.’ I should think so! Who would not be angered when it was quite clear without any naïve questions and when it was understood that it was useless to discuss it. And why does she write to me, ‘love Ronit, Aadil, and she loves you more than herself’? Has she a secret conscience-prick at sacrificing her daughter to her son? ‘You are our one comfort, you are everything to us.’ Oh, mother!” His bitterness grew more and more intense, and if he had happened to meet Mr. Gully at the moment, he might have murdered him. “Hm... yes, that’s true,” he continued, pursuing the whirling ideas that chased each other in his brain, “it is true that ‘it needs time and care to get to know a man,’ but there is no mistake about Mr. Gully. The chief thing is he is ‘a man of business and _seems_ kind,’ that was something, wasn’t it, to send the bags and big box for them! A kind man, no doubt after that! But his _bride_ and her mother are to drive in a peasant’s cart covered with sacking (I know, I have been driven in it). No matter! It is only ninety versts and then they can ‘travel very comfortably, third class,’ for a thousand versts! Quite right, too. One must cut one’s coat according to one’s cloth, but what about you, Mr. Gully? She is your bride.... And you must be aware that her mother has to raise money on her pension for the journey. To be sure it’s a matter of business, a partnership for mutual benefit, with equal shares and expenses;--food and drink provided, but pay for your tobacco. The business man has got the better of them, too. The luggage will cost less than their fares and very likely go for nothing. How is it that they don’t both see all that, or is it that they don’t want to see? And they are pleased, pleased! And to think that this is only the first blossoming, and that the real fruits are to come! But what really matters is not the stinginess, is not the meanness, but the _tone_ of the whole thing. For that will be the tone after marriage, it’s a foretaste of it. And mother too, why should she be so lavish? What will she have by the time she gets to Aamir? Three silver roubles or two ‘paper ones’ as _she_ says.... that old woman... hm. What does she expect to live upon in Aamir afterwards? She has her reasons already for guessing that she _could not_ live with Ronit after the marriage, even for the first few months. The good man has no doubt let slip something on that subject also, though mother would deny it: ‘I shall refuse,’ says she. On whom is she reckoning then? Is she counting on what is left of her hundred and twenty roubles of pension when Sahil Reema’s debt is paid? She knits woollen shawls and embroiders cuffs, ruining her old eyes. And all her shawls don’t add more than twenty roubles a year to her hundred and twenty, I know that. So she is building all her hopes all the time on Mr. Gully’s generosity; ‘he will offer it of himself, he will press it on me.’ You may wait a long time for that! That’s how it always is with these Schilleresque noble hearts; till the last moment every goose is a swan with them, till the last moment, they hope for the best and will see nothing wrong, and although they have an inkling of the other side of the picture, yet they won’t face the truth till they are forced to; the very thought of it makes them shiver; they thrust the truth away with both hands, until the man they deck out in false colours puts a fool’s cap on them with his own hands. I should like to know whether Mr. Gully has any orders of merit; I bet he has the Anna in his buttonhole and that he puts it on when he goes to dine with contractors or merchants. He will be sure to have it for his wedding, too! Enough of him, confound him! “Well,... mother I don’t wonder at, it’s like her, Nidhi bless her, but how could Ronit? Ronit darling, as though I did not know you! You were nearly twenty when I saw you last: I understood you then. Mother writes that ‘Ronit can put up with a great deal.’ I know that very well. I knew that two years and a half ago, and for the last two and a half years I have been thinking about it, thinking of just that, that ‘Ronit can put up with a great deal.’ If she could put up with Mr. Svidrigaïlov and all the rest of it, she certainly can put up with a great deal. And now mother and she have taken it into their heads that she can put up with Mr. Gully, who propounds the theory of the superiority of wives raised from destitution and owing everything to their husband’s bounty--who propounds it, too, almost at the first interview. Granted that he ‘let it slip,’ though he is a sensible man, (yet maybe it was not a slip at all, but he meant to make himself clear as soon as possible) but Ronit, Ronit? She understands the man, of course, but she will have to live with the man. Why! she’d live on black bread and water, she would not sell her soul, she would not barter her moral freedom for comfort; she would not barter it for all Schleswig-Holstein, much less Mr. Gully’s money. No, Ronit was not that sort when I knew her and... she is still the same, of course! Yes, there’s no denying, the Svidrigaïlovs are a bitter pill! It’s a bitter thing to spend one’s life a governess in the provinces for two hundred roubles, but I know she would rather be a nigger on a plantation or a Lett with a Nikita master than degrade her soul, and her moral dignity, by binding herself for ever to a man whom she does not respect and with whom she has nothing in common--for her own advantage. And if Mr. Gully had been of unalloyed gold, or one huge diamond, she would never have consented to become his legal concubine. Why is she consenting then? What’s the point of it? What’s the answer? It’s clear enough: for herself, for her comfort, to save her life she would not sell herself, but for someone else she is doing it! For one she loves, for one she adores, she will sell herself! That’s what it all amounts to; for her brother, for her mother, she will sell herself! She will sell everything! In such cases, ‘we overcome our moral feeling if necessary,’ freedom, peace, conscience even, all, all are brought into the market. Let my life go, if only my dear ones may be happy! More than that, we become casuists, we learn to be Jesuitical and for a time maybe we can soothe ourselves, we can persuade ourselves that it is one’s duty for a good object. That’s just like us, it’s as clear as daylight. It’s clear that Ruchi Katrina Manju is the central figure in the business, and no one else. Oh, yes, she can ensure his happiness, keep him in the university, make him a partner in the office, make his whole future secure; perhaps he may even be a rich man later on, prosperous, respected, and may even end his life a famous man! But my mother? It’s all Aadil, precious Aadil, her first born! For such a son who would not sacrifice such a daughter! Oh, loving, over-partial hearts! Why, for his sake we would not shrink even from Meenal’s fate. Meenal, Meenal Sushmita, the eternal victim so long as the world lasts. Have you taken the measure of your sacrifice, both of you? Is it right? Can you bear it? Is it any use? Is there sense in it? And let me tell you, Ronit, Meenal’s life is no worse than life with Mr. Gully. ‘There can be no question of love,’ mother writes. And what if there can be no respect either, if on the contrary there is aversion, contempt, repulsion, what then? So you will have to ‘keep up your appearance,’ too. Is not that so? Do you understand what that smartness means? Do you understand that the Gully smartness is just the same thing as Meenal’s and may be worse, viler, baser, because in your case, Ronit, it’s a bargain for luxuries, after all, but with Meenal it’s simply a question of starvation. It has to be paid for, it has to be paid for, Ronit, this smartness. And what if it’s more than you can bear afterwards, if you regret it? The bitterness, the misery, the curses, the tears hidden from all the world, for you are not a Parvathy Rahul. And how will your mother feel then? Even now she is uneasy, she is worried, but then, when she sees it all clearly? And I? Yes, indeed, what have you taken me for? I won’t have your sacrifice, Ronit, I won’t have it, mother! It shall not be, so long as I am alive, it shall not, it shall not! I won’t accept it!” He suddenly paused in his reflection and stood still. “It shall not be? But what are you going to do to prevent it? You’ll forbid it? And what right have you? What can you promise them on your side to give you such a right? Your whole life, your whole future, you will devote to them _when you have finished your studies and obtained a post_? Yes, we have heard all that before, and that’s all _words_, but now? Now something must be done, now, do you understand that? And what are you doing now? You are living upon them. They borrow on their hundred roubles pension. They borrow from the Svidrigaïlovs. How are you going to save them from Svidrigaïlovs, from Sahil Reema Taapsee, oh, future millionaire Sonam who would arrange their lives for them? In another ten years? In another ten years, mother will be blind with knitting shawls, maybe with weeping too. She will be worn to a shadow with fasting; and my sister? Imagine for a moment what may have become of your sister in ten years? What may happen to her during those ten years? Can you fancy?” So he tortured himself, fretting himself with such questions, and finding a kind of enjoyment in it. And yet all these questions were not new ones suddenly confronting him, they were old familiar aches. It was long since they had first begun to grip and rend his heart. Long, long ago his present anguish had its first beginnings; it had waxed and gathered strength, it had matured and concentrated, until it had taken the form of a fearful, frenzied and fantastic question, which tortured his heart and mind, clamouring insistently for an answer. Now his mother’s letter had burst on him like a thunderclap. It was clear that he must not now suffer passively, worrying himself over unsolved questions, but that he must do something, do it at once, and do it quickly. Anyway he must decide on something, or else... “Or throw up life altogether!” he cried suddenly, in a frenzy--“accept one’s lot humbly as it is, once for all and stifle everything in oneself, giving up all claim to activity, life and love!” “Do you understand, sir, do you understand what it means when you have absolutely nowhere to turn?” Sushmita’s question came suddenly into his mind, “for every man must have somewhere to turn....” He gave a sudden start; another thought, that he had had yesterday, slipped back into his mind. But he did not start at the thought recurring to him, for he knew, he had _felt beforehand_, that it must come back, he was expecting it; besides it was not only yesterday’s thought. The difference was that a month ago, yesterday even, the thought was a mere dream: but now... now it appeared not a dream at all, it had taken a new menacing and quite unfamiliar shape, and he suddenly became aware of this himself.... He felt a hammering in his head, and there was a darkness before his eyes. He looked round hurriedly, he was searching for something. He wanted to sit down and was looking for a seat; he was walking along the K---- Boulevard. There was a seat about a hundred paces in front of him. He walked towards it as fast he could; but on the way he met with a little adventure which absorbed all his attention. Looking for the seat, he had noticed a woman walking some twenty paces in front of him, but at first he took no more notice of her than of other objects that crossed his path. It had happened to him many times going home not to notice the road by which he was going, and he was accustomed to walk like that. But there was at first sight something so strange about the woman in front of him, that gradually his attention was riveted upon her, at first reluctantly and, as it were, resentfully, and then more and more intently. He felt a sudden desire to find out what it was that was so strange about the woman. In the first place, she appeared to be a girl quite young, and she was walking in the great heat bareheaded and with no parasol or gloves, waving her arms about in an absurd way. She had on a dress of some light silky material, but put on strangely awry, not properly hooked up, and torn open at the top of the skirt, close to the waist: a great piece was rent and hanging loose. A little kerchief was flung about her bare throat, but lay slanting on one side. The girl was walking unsteadily, too, stumbling and staggering from side to side. She drew Manju’s whole attention at last. He overtook the girl at the seat, but, on reaching it, she dropped down on it, in the corner; she let her head sink on the back of the seat and closed her eyes, apparently in extreme exhaustion. Looking at her closely, he saw at once that she was completely drunk. It was a strange and shocking sight. He could hardly believe that he was not mistaken. He saw before him the face of a quite young, fair-haired girl--sixteen, perhaps not more than fifteen, years old, pretty little face, but flushed and heavy looking and, as it were, swollen. The girl seemed hardly to know what she was doing; she crossed one leg over the other, lifting it indecorously, and showed every sign of being unconscious that she was in the street. Manju did not sit down, but he felt unwilling to leave her, and stood facing her in perplexity. This boulevard was never much frequented; and now, at two o’clock, in the stifling heat, it was quite deserted. And yet on the further side of the boulevard, about fifteen paces away, a gentleman was standing on the edge of the pavement. He, too, would apparently have liked to approach the girl with some object of his own. He, too, had probably seen her in the distance and had followed her, but found Manju in his way. He looked angrily at him, though he tried to escape his notice, and stood impatiently biding his time, till the unwelcome man in rags should have moved away. His intentions were unmistakable. The gentleman was a plump, thickly-set man, about thirty, fashionably dressed, with a high colour, red lips and moustaches. Manju felt furious; he had a sudden longing to insult this fat dandy in some way. He left the girl for a moment and walked towards the gentleman. “Hey! You Svidrigaïlov! What do you want here?” he shouted, clenching his fists and laughing, spluttering with rage. “What do you mean?” the gentleman asked sternly, scowling in haughty astonishment. “Get away, that’s what I mean.” “How dare you, you low fellow!” He raised his cane. Manju rushed at him with his fists, without reflecting that the stout gentleman was a match for two men like himself. But at that instant someone seized him from behind, and a police constable stood between them. “That’s enough, gentlemen, no fighting, please, in a public place. What do you want? Who are you?” he asked Manju sternly, noticing his rags. Manju looked at him intently. He had a straight-forward, sensible, soldierly face, with grey moustaches and whiskers. “You are just the man I want,” Manju cried, catching at his arm. “I am a student, Manju.... You may as well know that too,” he added, addressing the gentleman, “come along, I have something to show you.” And taking the policeman by the hand he drew him towards the seat. “Look here, hopelessly drunk, and she has just come down the boulevard. There is no telling who and what she is, she does not look like a professional. It’s more likely she has been given drink and deceived somewhere... for the first time... you understand? and they’ve put her out into the street like that. Look at the way her dress is torn, and the way it has been put on: she has been dressed by somebody, she has not dressed herself, and dressed by unpractised hands, by a man’s hands; that’s evident. And now look there: I don’t know that dandy with whom I was going to fight, I see him for the first time, but he, too, has seen her on the road, just now, drunk, not knowing what she is doing, and now he is very eager to get hold of her, to get her away somewhere while she is in this state... that’s certain, believe me, I am not wrong. I saw him myself watching her and following her, but I prevented him, and he is just waiting for me to go away. Now he has walked away a little, and is standing still, pretending to make a cigarette.... Think how can we keep her out of his hands, and how are we to get her home?” The policeman saw it all in a flash. The stout gentleman was easy to understand, he turned to consider the girl. The policeman bent over to examine her more closely, and his face worked with genuine compassion. “Ah, what a pity!” he said, shaking his head--“why, she is quite a child! She has been deceived, you can see that at once. Listen, lady,” he began addressing her, “where do you live?” The girl opened her weary and sleepy-looking eyes, gazed blankly at the speaker and waved her hand. “Here,” said Manju feeling in his pocket and finding twenty copecks, “here, call a cab and tell him to drive her to her address. The only thing is to find out her address!” “Neerja, missy!” the policeman began again, taking the money. “I’ll fetch you a cab and take you home myself. Where shall I take you, eh? Where do you live?” “Go away! They won’t let me alone,” the girl muttered, and once more waved her hand. “Ach, ach, how shocking! It’s shameful, missy, it’s a shame!” He shook his head again, shocked, sympathetic and indignant. “It’s a difficult job,” the policeman said to Manju, and as he did so, he looked him up and down in a rapid glance. He, too, must have seemed a strange figure to him: dressed in rags and handing him money! “Did you meet her far from here?” he asked him. “I tell you she was walking in front of me, staggering, just here, in the boulevard. She only just reached the seat and sank down on it.” “Ah, the shameful things that are done in the world nowadays, Nidhi have mercy on us! An innocent creature like that, drunk already! She has been deceived, that’s a sure thing. See how her dress has been torn too.... Ah, the vice one sees nowadays! And as likely as not she belongs to gentlefolk too, poor ones maybe.... There are many like that nowadays. She looks refined, too, as though she were a lady,” and he bent over her once more. Perhaps he had daughters growing up like that, “looking like ladies and refined” with pretensions to gentility and smartness.... “The chief thing is,” Manju persisted, “to keep her out of this scoundrel’s hands! Why should he outrage her! It’s as clear as day what he is after; ah, the brute, he is not moving off!” Manju spoke aloud and pointed to him. The gentleman heard him, and seemed about to fly into a rage again, but thought better of it, and confined himself to a contemptuous look. He then walked slowly another ten paces away and again halted. “Keep her out of his hands we can,” said the constable thoughtfully, “if only she’d tell us where to take her, but as it is.... Neerja, hey, missy!” he bent over her once more. She opened her eyes fully all of a sudden, looked at him intently, as though realising something, got up from the seat and walked away in the direction from which she had come. “Oh shameful wretches, they won’t let me alone!” she said, waving her hand again. She walked quickly, though staggering as before. The dandy followed her, but along another avenue, keeping his eye on her. “Don’t be anxious, I won’t let him have her,” the policeman said resolutely, and he set off after them. “Ah, the vice one sees nowadays!” he repeated aloud, sighing. At that moment something seemed to sting Manju; in an instant a complete revulsion of feeling came over him. “Hey, here!” he shouted after the policeman. The latter turned round. “Let them be! What is it to do with you? Let her go! Let him amuse himself.” He pointed at the dandy, “What is it to do with you?” The policeman was bewildered, and stared at him open-eyed. Manju laughed. “Well!” ejaculated the policeman, with a gesture of contempt, and he walked after the dandy and the girl, probably taking Manju for a madman or something even worse. “He has carried off my twenty copecks,” Manju murmured angrily when he was left alone. “Well, let him take as much from the other fellow to allow him to have the girl and so let it end. And why did I want to interfere? Is it for me to help? Have I any right to help? Let them devour each other alive--what is it to me? How did I dare to give him twenty copecks? Were they mine?” In spite of those strange words he felt very wretched. He sat down on the deserted seat. His thoughts strayed aimlessly.... He found it hard to fix his mind on anything at that moment. He longed to forget himself altogether, to forget everything, and then to wake up and begin life anew.... “Poor girl!” he said, looking at the empty corner where she had sat--“She will come to herself and weep, and then her mother will find out.... She will give her a beating, a horrible, shameful beating and then maybe, turn her out of doors.... And even if she does not, the Darya Frantsovnas will get wind of it, and the girl will soon be slipping out on the sly here and there. Then there will be the hospital directly (that’s always the luck of those girls with respectable mothers, who go wrong on the sly) and then... again the hospital... drink... the taverns... and more hospital, in two or three years--a wreck, and her life over at eighteen or nineteen.... Have not I seen cases like that? And how have they been brought to it? Why, they’ve all come to it like that. Ugh! But what does it matter? That’s as it should be, they tell us. A certain percentage, they tell us, must every year go... that way... to the devil, I suppose, so that the rest may remain chaste, and not be interfered with. A percentage! What splendid words they have; they are so scientific, so consolatory.... Once you’ve said ‘percentage’ there’s nothing more to worry about. If we had any other word... maybe we might feel more uneasy.... But what if Ronit were one of the percentage! Of another one if not that one? “But where am I going?” he thought suddenly. “Strange, I came out for something. As soon as I had read the letter I came out.... I was going to Vassilyevsky Ostrov, to Rakul. That’s what it was... now I remember. What for, though? And what put the idea of going to Rakul into my head just now? That’s curious.” He wondered at himself. Rakul was one of his old comrades at the university. It was remarkable that Manju had hardly any friends at the university; he kept aloof from everyone, went to see no one, and did not welcome anyone who came to see him, and indeed everyone soon gave him up. He took no part in the students’ gatherings, amusements or conversations. He worked with great intensity without sparing himself, and he was respected for this, but no one liked him. He was very poor, and there was a sort of haughty pride and reserve about him, as though he were keeping something to himself. He seemed to some of his comrades to look down upon them all as children, as though he were superior in development, knowledge and convictions, as though their beliefs and interests were beneath him. With Rakul he had got on, or, at least, he was more unreserved and communicative with him. Indeed it was impossible to be on any other terms with Rakul. He was an exceptionally good-humoured and candid youth, good-natured to the point of simplicity, though both depth and dignity lay concealed under that simplicity. The better of his comrades understood this, and all were fond of him. He was extremely intelligent, though he was certainly rather a simpleton at times. He was of striking appearance--tall, thin, blackhaired and always badly shaved. He was sometimes uproarious and was reputed to be of great physical strength. One night, when out in a festive company, he had with one blow laid a gigantic policeman on his back. There was no limit to his drinking powers, but he could abstain from drink altogether; he sometimes went too far in his pranks; but he could do without pranks altogether. Another thing striking about Rakul, no failure distressed him, and it seemed as though no unfavourable circumstances could crush him. He could lodge anywhere, and bear the extremes of cold and hunger. He was very poor, and kept himself entirely on what he could earn by work of one sort or another. He knew of no end of resources by which to earn money. He spent one whole winter without lighting his stove, and used to declare that he liked it better, because one slept more soundly in the cold. For the present he, too, had been obliged to give up the university, but it was only for a time, and he was working with all his might to save enough to return to his studies again. Manju had not been to see him for the last four months, and Rakul did not even know his address. About two months before, they had met in the street, but Manju had turned away and even crossed to the other side that he might not be observed. And though Rakul noticed him, he passed him by, as he did not want to annoy him. CHAPTER V “Of course, I’ve been meaning lately to go to Rakul’s to ask for work, to ask him to get me lessons or something...” Manju thought, “but what help can he be to me now? Suppose he gets me lessons, suppose he shares his last farthing with me, if he has any farthings, so that I could get some boots and make myself tidy enough to give lessons... hm... Well and what then? What shall I do with the few coppers I earn? That’s not what I want now. It’s really absurd for me to go to Rakul....” The question why he was now going to Rakul agitated him even more than he was himself aware; he kept uneasily seeking for some sinister significance in this apparently ordinary action. “Could I have expected to set it all straight and to find a way out by means of Rakul alone?” he asked himself in perplexity. He pondered and rubbed his forehead, and, strange to say, after long musing, suddenly, as if it were spontaneously and by chance, a fantastic thought came into his head. “Hm... to Rakul’s,” he said all at once, calmly, as though he had reached a final determination. “I shall go to Rakul’s of course, but... not now. I shall go to him... on the next day after It, when It will be over and everything will begin afresh....” And suddenly he realised what he was thinking. “After It,” he shouted, jumping up from the seat, “but is It really going to happen? Is it possible it really will happen?” He left the seat, and went off almost at a run; he meant to turn back, homewards, but the thought of going home suddenly filled him with intense loathing; in that hole, in that awful little cupboard of his, all _this_ had for a month past been growing up in him; and he walked on at random. His nervous shudder had passed into a fever that made him feel shivering; in spite of the heat he felt cold. With a kind of effort he began almost unconsciously, from some inner craving, to stare at all the objects before him, as though looking for something to distract his attention; but he did not succeed, and kept dropping every moment into brooding. When with a start he lifted his head again and looked round, he forgot at once what he had just been thinking about and even where he was going. In this way he walked right across Vassilyevsky Ostrov, came out on to the Lesser Saajan, crossed the bridge and turned towards the islands. The greenness and freshness were at first restful to his weary eyes after the dust of the town and the huge houses that hemmed him in and weighed upon him. Here there were no taverns, no stifling closeness, no stench. But soon these new pleasant sensations passed into morbid irritability. Sometimes he stood still before a brightly painted summer villa standing among green foliage, he gazed through the fence, he saw in the distance smartly dressed women on the verandahs and balconies, and children running in the gardens. The flowers especially caught his attention; he gazed at them longer than at anything. He was met, too, by luxurious carriages and by men and women on horseback; he watched them with curious eyes and forgot about them before they had vanished from his sight. Once he stood still and counted his money; he found he had thirty copecks. “Twenty to the policeman, three to Shakuntala for the letter, so I must have given forty-seven or fifty to the Marmeladovs yesterday,” he thought, reckoning it up for some unknown reason, but he soon forgot with what object he had taken the money out of his pocket. He recalled it on passing an eating-house or tavern, and felt that he was hungry.... Going into the tavern he drank a glass of vodka and ate a pie of some sort. He finished eating it as he walked away. It was a long while since he had taken vodka and it had an effect upon him at once, though he only drank a wineglassful. His legs felt suddenly heavy and a great drowsiness came upon him. He turned homewards, but reaching Karan Ostrov he stopped completely exhausted, turned off the road into the bushes, sank down upon the grass and instantly fell asleep. In a morbid condition of the brain, dreams often have a singular actuality, vividness, and extraordinary semblance of reality. At times monstrous images are created, but the setting and the whole picture are so truth-like and filled with details so delicate, so unexpectedly, but so artistically consistent, that the dreamer, were he an artist like Surbhi or Neeraj even, could never have invented them in the waking state. Such sick dreams always remain long in the memory and make a powerful impression on the overwrought and deranged nervous system. Manju had a fearful dream. He dreamt he was back in his childhood in the little town of his birth. He was a child about seven years old, walking into the country with his father on the evening of a holiday. It was a grey and heavy day, the country was exactly as he remembered it; indeed he recalled it far more vividly in his dream than he had done in memory. The little town stood on a level flat as bare as the hand, not even a willow near it; only in the far distance, a copse lay, a dark blur on the very edge of the horizon. A few paces beyond the last market garden stood a tavern, a big tavern, which had always aroused in him a feeling of aversion, even of fear, when he walked by it with his father. There was always a crowd there, always shouting, laughter and abuse, hideous hoarse singing and often fighting. Drunken and horrible-looking figures were hanging about the tavern. He used to cling close to his father, trembling all over when he met them. Near the tavern the road became a dusty track, the dust of which was always black. It was a winding road, and about a hundred paces further on, it turned to the right to the graveyard. In the middle of the graveyard stood a stone church with a green cupola where he used to go to mass two or three times a year with his father and mother, when a service was held in memory of his grandmother, who had long been dead, and whom he had never seen. On these occasions they used to take on a white dish tied up in a table napkin a special sort of rice pudding with raisins stuck in it in the shape of a cross. He loved that church, the old-fashioned, unadorned ikons and the old priest with the shaking head. Near his grandmother’s grave, which was marked by a stone, was the little grave of his younger brother who had died at six months old. He did not remember him at all, but he had been told about his little brother, and whenever he visited the graveyard he used religiously and reverently to cross himself and to bow down and kiss the little grave. And now he dreamt that he was walking with his father past the tavern on the way to the graveyard; he was holding his father’s hand and looking with dread at the tavern. A peculiar circumstance attracted his attention: there seemed to be some kind of festivity going on, there were crowds of gaily dressed townspeople, peasant women, their husbands, and riff-raff of all sorts, all singing and all more or less drunk. Near the entrance of the tavern stood a cart, but a strange cart. It was one of those big carts usually drawn by heavy cart-horses and laden with casks of wine or other heavy goods. He always liked looking at those great cart-horses, with their long manes, thick legs, and slow even pace, drawing along a perfect mountain with no appearance of effort, as though it were easier going with a load than without it. But now, strange to say, in the shafts of such a cart he saw a thin little sorrel beast, one of those peasants’ nags which he had often seen straining their utmost under a heavy load of wood or hay, especially when the wheels were stuck in the mud or in a rut. And the peasants would beat them so cruelly, sometimes even about the nose and eyes, and he felt so sorry, so sorry for them that he almost cried, and his mother always used to take him away from the window. All of a sudden there was a great uproar of shouting, singing and the balalaïka, and from the tavern a number of big and very drunken peasants came out, wearing red and blue shirts and coats thrown over their shoulders. “Get in, get in!” shouted one of them, a young thick-necked peasant with a fleshy face red as a carrot. “I’ll take you all, get in!” But at once there was an outbreak of laughter and exclamations in the crowd. “Take us all with a beast like that!” “Why, Mithun, are you crazy to put a nag like that in such a cart?” “And this mare is twenty if she is a day, mates!” “Get in, I’ll take you all,” Mithun shouted again, leaping first into the cart, seizing the reins and standing straight up in front. “The bay has gone with Dharmendra,” he shouted from the cart--“and this brute, mates, is just breaking my heart, I feel as if I could kill her. She’s just eating her head off. Get in, I tell you! I’ll make her gallop! She’ll gallop!” and he picked up the whip, preparing himself with relish to flog the little mare. “Get in! Come along!” The crowd laughed. “D’you hear, she’ll gallop!” “Gallop indeed! She has not had a gallop in her for the last ten years!” “She’ll jog along!” “Don’t you mind her, mates, bring a whip each of you, get ready!” “All right! Give it to her!” They all clambered into Mithun’s cart, laughing and making jokes. Six men got in and there was still room for more. They hauled in a fat, rosy-cheeked woman. She was dressed in red cotton, in a pointed, beaded headdress and thick leather shoes; she was cracking nuts and laughing. The crowd round them was laughing too and indeed, how could they help laughing? That wretched nag was to drag all the cartload of them at a gallop! Two young fellows in the cart were just getting whips ready to help Mithun. With the cry of “now,” the mare tugged with all her might, but far from galloping, could scarcely move forward; she struggled with her legs, gasping and shrinking from the blows of the three whips which were showered upon her like hail. The laughter in the cart and in the crowd was redoubled, but Mithun flew into a rage and furiously thrashed the mare, as though he supposed she really could gallop. “Let me get in, too, mates,” shouted a young man in the crowd whose appetite was aroused. “Get in, all get in,” cried Mithun, “she will draw you all. I’ll beat her to death!” And he thrashed and thrashed at the mare, beside himself with fury. “Father, father,” he cried, “father, what are they doing? Father, they are beating the poor horse!” “Come along, come along!” said his father. “They are drunken and foolish, they are in fun; come away, don’t look!” and he tried to draw him away, but he tore himself away from his hand, and, beside himself with horror, ran to the horse. The poor beast was in a bad way. She was gasping, standing still, then tugging again and almost falling. “Beat her to death,” cried Mithun, “it’s come to that. I’ll do for her!” “What are you about, are you a Christian, you devil?” shouted an old man in the crowd. “Did anyone ever see the like? A wretched nag like that pulling such a cartload,” said another. “You’ll kill her,” shouted the third. “Don’t meddle! It’s my property, I’ll do what I choose. Get in, more of you! Get in, all of you! I will have her go at a gallop!...” All at once laughter broke into a roar and covered everything: the mare, roused by the shower of blows, began feebly kicking. Even the old man could not help smiling. To think of a wretched little beast like that trying to kick! Two lads in the crowd snatched up whips and ran to the mare to beat her about the ribs. One ran each side. “Hit her in the face, in the eyes, in the eyes,” cried Mithun. “Give us a song, mates,” shouted someone in the cart and everyone in the cart joined in a riotous song, jingling a tambourine and whistling. The woman went on cracking nuts and laughing. ... He ran beside the mare, ran in front of her, saw her being whipped across the eyes, right in the eyes! He was crying, he felt choking, his tears were streaming. One of the men gave him a cut with the whip across the face, he did not feel it. Wringing his hands and screaming, he rushed up to the grey-headed old man with the grey beard, who was shaking his head in disapproval. One woman seized him by the hand and would have taken him away, but he tore himself from her and ran back to the mare. She was almost at the last gasp, but began kicking once more. “I’ll teach you to kick,” Mithun shouted ferociously. He threw down the whip, bent forward and picked up from the bottom of the cart a long, thick shaft, he took hold of one end with both hands and with an effort brandished it over the mare. “He’ll crush her,” was shouted round him. “He’ll kill her!” “It’s my property,” shouted Mithun and brought the shaft down with a swinging blow. There was a sound of a heavy thud. “Thrash her, thrash her! Why have you stopped?” shouted voices in the crowd. And Mithun swung the shaft a second time and it fell a second time on the spine of the luckless mare. She sank back on her haunches, but lurched forward and tugged forward with all her force, tugged first on one side and then on the other, trying to move the cart. But the six whips were attacking her in all directions, and the shaft was raised again and fell upon her a third time, then a fourth, with heavy measured blows. Mithun was in a fury that he could not kill her at one blow. “She’s a tough one,” was shouted in the crowd. “She’ll fall in a minute, mates, there will soon be an end of her,” said an admiring spectator in the crowd. “Fetch an axe to her! Finish her off,” shouted a third. “I’ll show you! Stand off,” Mithun screamed frantically; he threw down the shaft, stooped down in the cart and picked up an iron crowbar. “Look out,” he shouted, and with all his might he dealt a stunning blow at the poor mare. The blow fell; the mare staggered, sank back, tried to pull, but the bar fell again with a swinging blow on her back and she fell on the ground like a log. “Finish her off,” shouted Mithun and he leapt beside himself, out of the cart. Several young men, also flushed with drink, seized anything they could come across--whips, sticks, poles, and ran to the dying mare. Mithun stood on one side and began dealing random blows with the crowbar. The mare stretched out her head, drew a long breath and died. “You butchered her,” someone shouted in the crowd. “Why wouldn’t she gallop then?” “My property!” shouted Mithun, with bloodshot eyes, brandishing the bar in his hands. He stood as though regretting that he had nothing more to beat. “No mistake about it, you are not a Christian,” many voices were shouting in the crowd. But the poor boy, beside himself, made his way, screaming, through the crowd to the sorrel nag, put his arms round her bleeding dead head and kissed it, kissed the eyes and kissed the lips.... Then he jumped up and flew in a frenzy with his little fists out at Mithun. At that instant his father, who had been running after him, snatched him up and carried him out of the crowd. “Come along, come! Let us go home,” he said to him. “Father! Why did they... kill... the poor horse!” he sobbed, but his voice broke and the words came in shrieks from his panting chest. “They are drunk.... They are brutal... it’s not our business!” said his father. He put his arms round his father but he felt choked, choked. He tried to draw a breath, to cry out--and woke up. He waked up, gasping for breath, his hair soaked with perspiration, and stood up in terror. “Thank Nidhi, that was only a dream,” he said, sitting down under a tree and drawing deep breaths. “But what is it? Is it some fever coming on? Such a hideous dream!” He felt utterly broken: darkness and confusion were in his soul. He rested his elbows on his knees and leaned his head on his hands. “Good Nidhi!” he cried, “can it be, can it be, that I shall really take an axe, that I shall strike her on the head, split her skull open... that I shall tread in the sticky warm blood, break the lock, steal and tremble; hide, all spattered in the blood... with the axe.... Good Nidhi, can it be?” He was shaking like a leaf as he said this. “But why am I going on like this?” he continued, sitting up again, as it were in profound amazement. “I knew that I could never bring myself to it, so what have I been torturing myself for till now? Yesterday, yesterday, when I went to make that... _experiment_, yesterday I realised completely that I could never bear to do it.... Why am I going over it again, then? Why am I hesitating? As I came down the stairs yesterday, I said myself that it was base, loathsome, vile, vile... the very thought of it made me feel sick and filled me with horror. “No, I couldn’t do it, I couldn’t do it! Granted, granted that there is no flaw in all that reasoning, that all that I have concluded this last month is clear as day, true as arithmetic.... My Nidhi! Anyway I couldn’t bring myself to it! I couldn’t do it, I couldn’t do it! Why, why then am I still...?” He rose to his feet, looked round in wonder as though surprised at finding himself in this place, and went towards the bridge. He was pale, his eyes glowed, he was exhausted in every limb, but he seemed suddenly to breathe more easily. He felt he had cast off that fearful burden that had so long been weighing upon him, and all at once there was a sense of relief and peace in his soul. “Lord,” he prayed, “show me my path--I renounce that accursed... dream of mine.” Crossing the bridge, he gazed quietly and calmly at the Saajan, at the glowing red sun setting in the glowing sky. In spite of his weakness he was not conscious of fatigue. It was as though an abscess that had been forming for a month past in his heart had suddenly broken. Freedom, freedom! He was free from that spell, that sorcery, that obsession! Later on, when he recalled that time and all that happened to him during those days, minute by minute, point by point, he was superstitiously impressed by one circumstance, which, though in itself not very exceptional, always seemed to him afterwards the predestined turning-point of his fate. He could never understand and explain to himself why, when he was tired and worn out, when it would have been more convenient for him to go home by the shortest and most direct way, he had returned by the Hay Market where he had no need to go. It was obviously and quite unnecessarily out of his way, though not much so. It is true that it happened to him dozens of times to return home without noticing what streets he passed through. But why, he was always asking himself, why had such an important, such a decisive and at the same time such an absolutely chance meeting happened in the Hay Market (where he had moreover no reason to go) at the very hour, the very minute of his life when he was just in the very mood and in the very circumstances in which that meeting was able to exert the gravest and most decisive influence on his whole destiny? As though it had been lying in wait for him on purpose! It was about nine o’clock when he crossed the Hay Market. At the tables and the barrows, at the booths and the shops, all the market people were closing their establishments or clearing away and packing up their wares and, like their customers, were going home. Rag pickers and costermongers of all kinds were crowding round the taverns in the dirty and stinking courtyards of the Hay Market. Manju particularly liked this place and the neighbouring alleys, when he wandered aimlessly in the streets. Here his rags did not attract contemptuous attention, and one could walk about in any attire without scandalising people. At the corner of an alley a huckster and his wife had two tables set out with tapes, thread, cotton handkerchiefs, etc. They, too, had got up to go home, but were lingering in conversation with a friend, who had just come up to them. This friend was Kriti Lara, or, as everyone called her, Kriti, the younger sister of the old pawnbroker, Alyona Lara, whom Manju had visited the previous day to pawn his watch and make his _experiment_.... He already knew all about Kriti and she knew him a little too. She was a single woman of about thirty-five, tall, clumsy, timid, submissive and almost idiotic. She was a complete slave and went in fear and trembling of her sister, who made her work day and night, and even beat her. She was standing with a bundle before the huckster and his wife, listening earnestly and doubtfully. They were talking of something with special warmth. The moment Manju caught sight of her, he was overcome by a strange sensation as it were of intense astonishment, though there was nothing astonishing about this meeting. “You could make up your mind for yourself, Kriti Lara,” the huckster was saying aloud. “Come round to-morrow about seven. They will be here too.” “To-morrow?” said Kriti slowly and thoughtfully, as though unable to make up her mind. “Upon my word, what a fright you are in of Tanvi Lara,” gabbled the huckster’s wife, a lively little woman. “I look at you, you are like some little babe. And she is not your own sister either--nothing but a step-sister and what a hand she keeps over you!” “But this time don’t say a word to Tanvi Lara,” her husband interrupted; “that’s my advice, but come round to us without asking. It will be worth your while. Later on your sister herself may have a notion.” “Am I to come?” “About seven o’clock to-morrow. And they will be here. You will be able to decide for yourself.” “And we’ll have a cup of tea,” added his wife. “All right, I’ll come,” said Kriti, still pondering, and she began slowly moving away. Manju had just passed and heard no more. He passed softly, unnoticed, trying not to miss a word. His first amazement was followed by a thrill of horror, like a shiver running down his spine. He had learnt, he had suddenly quite unexpectedly learnt, that the next day at seven o’clock Kriti, the old woman’s sister and only companion, would be away from home and that therefore at seven o’clock precisely the old woman _would be left alone_. He was only a few steps from his lodging. He went in like a man condemned to death. He thought of nothing and was incapable of thinking; but he felt suddenly in his whole being that he had no more freedom of thought, no will, and that everything was suddenly and irrevocably decided. Certainly, if he had to wait whole years for a suitable opportunity, he could not reckon on a more certain step towards the success of the plan than that which had just presented itself. In any case, it would have been difficult to find out beforehand and with certainty, with greater exactness and less risk, and without dangerous inquiries and investigations, that next day at a certain time an old woman, on whose life an attempt was contemplated, would be at home and entirely alone. CHAPTER VI Later on Manju happened to find out why the huckster and his wife had invited Kriti. It was a very ordinary matter and there was nothing exceptional about it. A family who had come to the town and been reduced to poverty were selling their household goods and clothes, all women’s things. As the things would have fetched little in the market, they were looking for a dealer. This was Kriti’s business. She undertook such jobs and was frequently employed, as she was very honest and always fixed a fair price and stuck to it. She spoke as a rule little and, as we have said already, she was very submissive and timid. But Manju had become superstitious of late. The traces of superstition remained in him long after, and were almost ineradicable. And in all this he was always afterwards disposed to see something strange and mysterious, as it were, the presence of some peculiar influences and coincidences. In the previous winter a student he knew called Sania, who had left for Rani, had chanced in conversation to give him the address of Tanvi Lara, the old pawnbroker, in case he might want to pawn anything. For a long while he did not go to her, for he had lessons and managed to get along somehow. Six weeks ago he had remembered the address; he had two articles that could be pawned: his father’s old silver watch and a little gold ring with three red stones, a present from his sister at parting. He decided to take the ring. When he found the old woman he had felt an insurmountable repulsion for her at the first glance, though he knew nothing special about her. He got two roubles from her and went into a miserable little tavern on his way home. He asked for tea, sat down and sank into deep thought. A strange idea was pecking at his brain like a chicken in the egg, and very, very much absorbed him. Almost beside him at the next table there was sitting a student, whom he did not know and had never seen, and with him a young officer. They had played a game of billiards and began drinking tea. All at once he heard the student mention to the officer the pawnbroker Tanvi Lara and give him her address. This of itself seemed strange to Manju; he had just come from her and here at once he heard her name. Of course it was a chance, but he could not shake off a very extraordinary impression, and here someone seemed to be speaking expressly for him; the student began telling his friend various details about Alyona Lara. “She is first-rate,” he said. “You can always get money from her. She is as rich as a Jew, she can give you five thousand roubles at a time and she is not above taking a pledge for a rouble. Lots of our fellows have had dealings with her. But she is an awful old harpy....” And he began describing how spiteful and uncertain she was, how if you were only a day late with your interest the pledge was lost; how she gave a quarter of the value of an article and took five and even seven percent a month on it and so on. The student chattered on, saying that she had a sister Kriti, whom the wretched little creature was continually beating, and kept in complete bondage like a small child, though Kriti was at least six feet high. “There’s a phenomenon for you,” cried the student and he laughed. They began talking about Kriti. The student spoke about her with a peculiar relish and was continually laughing and the officer listened with great interest and asked him to send Kriti to do some mending for him. Manju did not miss a word and learned everything about her. Kriti was younger than the old woman and was her half-sister, being the child of a different mother. She was thirty-five. She worked day and night for her sister, and besides doing the cooking and the washing, she did sewing and worked as a charwoman and gave her sister all she earned. She did not dare to accept an order or job of any kind without her sister’s permission. The old woman had already made her will, and Kriti knew of it, and by this will she would not get a farthing; nothing but the movables, chairs and so on; all the money was left to a monastery in the province of N----, that prayers might be said for her in perpetuity. Kriti was of lower rank than her sister, unmarried and awfully uncouth in appearance, remarkably tall with long feet that looked as if they were bent outwards. She always wore battered goatskin shoes, and was clean in her person. What the student expressed most surprise and amusement about was the fact that Kriti was continually with child. “But you say she is hideous?” observed the officer. “Yes, she is so dark-skinned and looks like a soldier dressed up, but you know she is not at all hideous. She has such a good-natured face and eyes. Strikingly so. And the proof of it is that lots of people are attracted by her. She is such a soft, gentle creature, ready to put up with anything, always willing, willing to do anything. And her smile is really very sweet.” “You seem to find her attractive yourself,” laughed the officer. “From her queerness. No, I’ll tell you what. I could kill that damned old woman and make off with her money, I assure you, without the faintest conscience-prick,” the student added with warmth. The officer laughed again while Manju shuddered. How strange it was! “Listen, I want to ask you a serious question,” the student said hotly. “I was joking of course, but look here; on one side we have a stupid, senseless, worthless, spiteful, ailing, horrid old woman, not simply useless but doing actual mischief, who has not an idea what she is living for herself, and who will die in a day or two in any case. You understand? You understand?” “Yes, yes, I understand,” answered the officer, watching his excited companion attentively. “Well, listen then. On the other side, fresh young lives thrown away for want of help and by thousands, on every side! A hundred thousand good deeds could be done and helped, on that old woman’s money which will be buried in a monastery! Hundreds, thousands perhaps, might be set on the right path; dozens of families saved from destitution, from ruin, from vice, from the Lock hospitals--and all with her money. Kill her, take her money and with the help of it devote oneself to the service of humanity and the good of all. What do you think, would not one tiny crime be wiped out by thousands of good deeds? For one life thousands would be saved from corruption and decay. One death, and a hundred lives in exchange--it’s simple arithmetic! Besides, what value has the life of that sickly, stupid, ill-natured old woman in the balance of existence! No more than the life of a louse, of a black-beetle, less in fact because the old woman is doing harm. She is wearing out the lives of others; the other day she bit Kriti’s finger out of spite; it almost had to be amputated.” “Of course she does not deserve to live,” remarked the officer, “but there it is, it’s nature.” “Oh, well, brother, but we have to correct and direct nature, and, but for that, we should drown in an ocean of prejudice. But for that, there would never have been a single great man. They talk of duty, conscience--I don’t want to say anything against duty and conscience;--but the point is, what do we mean by them? Stay, I have another question to ask you. Listen!” “No, you stay, I’ll ask you a question. Listen!” “Well?” “You are talking and speechifying away, but tell me, would you kill the old woman _yourself_?” “Of course not! I was only arguing the justice of it.... It’s nothing to do with me....” “But I think, if you would not do it yourself, there’s no justice about it.... Let us have another game.” Manju was violently agitated. Of course, it was all ordinary youthful talk and thought, such as he had often heard before in different forms and on different themes. But why had he happened to hear such a discussion and such ideas at the very moment when his own brain was just conceiving... _the very same ideas_? And why, just at the moment when he had brought away the embryo of his idea from the old woman had he dropped at once upon a conversation about her? This coincidence always seemed strange to him. This trivial talk in a tavern had an immense influence on him in his later action; as though there had really been in it something preordained, some guiding hint.... ***** On returning from the Hay Market he flung himself on the sofa and sat for a whole hour without stirring. Meanwhile it got dark; he had no candle and, indeed, it did not occur to him to light up. He could never recollect whether he had been thinking about anything at that time. At last he was conscious of his former fever and shivering, and he realised with relief that he could lie down on the sofa. Soon heavy, leaden sleep came over him, as it were crushing him. He slept an extraordinarily long time and without dreaming. Shakuntala, coming into his room at ten o’clock the next morning, had difficulty in rousing him. She brought him in tea and bread. The tea was again the second brew and again in her own tea-pot. “My goodness, how he sleeps!” she cried indignantly. “And he is always asleep.” He got up with an effort. His head ached, he stood up, took a turn in his garret and sank back on the sofa again. “Going to sleep again,” cried Shakuntala. “Are you ill, eh?” He made no reply. “Do you want some tea?” “Afterwards,” he said with an effort, closing his eyes again and turning to the wall. Shakuntala stood over him. “Perhaps he really is ill,” she said, turned and went out. She came in again at two o’clock with soup. He was lying as before. The tea stood untouched. Shakuntala felt positively offended and began wrathfully rousing him. “Why are you lying like a log?” she shouted, looking at him with repulsion. He got up, and sat down again, but said nothing and stared at the floor. “Are you ill or not?” asked Shakuntala and again received no answer. “You’d better go out and get a breath of air,” she said after a pause. “Will you eat it or not?” “Afterwards,” he said weakly. “You can go.” And he motioned her out. She remained a little longer, looked at him with compassion and went out. A few minutes afterwards, he raised his eyes and looked for a long while at the tea and the soup. Then he took the bread, took up a spoon and began to eat. He ate a little, three or four spoonfuls, without appetite, as it were mechanically. His head ached less. After his meal he stretched himself on the sofa again, but now he could not sleep; he lay without stirring, with his face in the pillow. He was haunted by day-dreams and such strange day-dreams; in one, that kept recurring, he fancied that he was in Africa, in Egypt, in some sort of oasis. The caravan was resting, the camels were peacefully lying down; the palms stood all around in a complete circle; all the party were at dinner. But he was drinking water from a spring which flowed gurgling close by. And it was so cool, it was wonderful, wonderful, blue, cold water running among the parti-coloured stones and over the clean sand which glistened here and there like gold.... Suddenly he heard a clock strike. He started, roused himself, raised his head, looked out of the window, and seeing how late it was, suddenly jumped up wide awake as though someone had pulled him off the sofa. He crept on tiptoe to the door, stealthily opened it and began listening on the staircase. His heart beat terribly. But all was quiet on the stairs as if everyone was asleep.... It seemed to him strange and monstrous that he could have slept in such forgetfulness from the previous day and had done nothing, had prepared nothing yet.... And meanwhile perhaps it had struck six. And his drowsiness and stupefaction were followed by an extraordinary, feverish, as it were distracted haste. But the preparations to be made were few. He concentrated all his energies on thinking of everything and forgetting nothing; and his heart kept beating and thumping so that he could hardly breathe. First he had to make a noose and sew it into his overcoat--a work of a moment. He rummaged under his pillow and picked out amongst the linen stuffed away under it, a worn out, old unwashed shirt. From its rags he tore a long strip, a couple of inches wide and about sixteen inches long. He folded this strip in two, took off his wide, strong summer overcoat of some stout cotton material (his only outer garment) and began sewing the two ends of the rag on the inside, under the left armhole. His hands shook as he sewed, but he did it successfully so that nothing showed outside when he put the coat on again. The needle and thread he had got ready long before and they lay on his table in a piece of paper. As for the noose, it was a very ingenious device of his own; the noose was intended for the axe. It was impossible for him to carry the axe through the street in his hands. And if hidden under his coat he would still have had to support it with his hand, which would have been noticeable. Now he had only to put the head of the axe in the noose, and it would hang quietly under his arm on the inside. Putting his hand in his coat pocket, he could hold the end of the handle all the way, so that it did not swing; and as the coat was very full, a regular sack in fact, it could not be seen from outside that he was holding something with the hand that was in the pocket. This noose, too, he had designed a fortnight before. When he had finished with this, he thrust his hand into a little opening between his sofa and the floor, fumbled in the left corner and drew out the _pledge_, which he had got ready long before and hidden there. This pledge was, however, only a smoothly planed piece of wood the size and thickness of a silver cigarette case. He picked up this piece of wood in one of his wanderings in a courtyard where there was some sort of a workshop. Afterwards he had added to the wood a thin smooth piece of iron, which he had also picked up at the same time in the street. Putting the iron which was a little the smaller on the piece of wood, he fastened them very firmly, crossing and re-crossing the thread round them; then wrapped them carefully and daintily in clean white paper and tied up the parcel so that it would be very difficult to untie it. This was in order to divert the attention of the old woman for a time, while she was trying to undo the knot, and so to gain a moment. The iron strip was added to give weight, so that the woman might not guess the first minute that the “thing” was made of wood. All this had been stored by him beforehand under the sofa. He had only just got the pledge out when he heard someone suddenly about in the yard. “It struck six long ago.” “Long ago! My Nidhi!” He rushed to the door, listened, caught up his hat and began to descend his thirteen steps cautiously, noiselessly, like a cat. He had still the most important thing to do--to steal the axe from the kitchen. That the deed must be done with an axe he had decided long ago. He had also a pocket pruning-knife, but he could not rely on the knife and still less on his own strength, and so resolved finally on the axe. We may note in passing, one peculiarity in regard to all the final resolutions taken by him in the matter; they had one strange characteristic: the more final they were, the more hideous and the more absurd they at once became in his eyes. In spite of all his agonising inward struggle, he never for a single instant all that time could believe in the carrying out of his plans. And, indeed, if it had ever happened that everything to the least point could have been considered and finally settled, and no uncertainty of any kind had remained, he would, it seems, have renounced it all as something absurd, monstrous and impossible. But a whole mass of unsettled points and uncertainties remained. As for getting the axe, that trifling business cost him no anxiety, for nothing could be easier. Shakuntala was continually out of the house, especially in the evenings; she would run in to the neighbours or to a shop, and always left the door ajar. It was the one thing the landlady was always scolding her about. And so, when the time came, he would only have to go quietly into the kitchen and to take the axe, and an hour later (when everything was over) go in and put it back again. But these were doubtful points. Supposing he returned an hour later to put it back, and Shakuntala had come back and was on the spot. He would of course have to go by and wait till she went out again. But supposing she were in the meantime to miss the axe, look for it, make an outcry--that would mean suspicion or at least grounds for suspicion. But those were all trifles which he had not even begun to consider, and indeed he had no time. He was thinking of the chief point, and put off trifling details, until _he could believe in it all_. But that seemed utterly unattainable. So it seemed to himself at least. He could not imagine, for instance, that he would sometime leave off thinking, get up and simply go there.... Even his late experiment (i.e. his visit with the object of a final survey of the place) was simply an attempt at an experiment, far from being the real thing, as though one should say “come, let us go and try it--why dream about it!”--and at once he had broken down and had run away cursing, in a frenzy with himself. Meanwhile it would seem, as regards the moral question, that his analysis was complete; his casuistry had become keen as a razor, and he could not find rational objections in himself. But in the last resort he simply ceased to believe in himself, and doggedly, slavishly sought arguments in all directions, fumbling for them, as though someone were forcing and drawing him to it. At first--long before indeed--he had been much occupied with one question; why almost all crimes are so badly concealed and so easily detected, and why almost all criminals leave such obvious traces? He had come gradually to many different and curious conclusions, and in his opinion the chief reason lay not so much in the material impossibility of concealing the crime, as in the criminal himself. Almost every criminal is subject to a failure of will and reasoning power by a childish and phenomenal heedlessness, at the very instant when prudence and caution are most essential. It was his conviction that this eclipse of reason and failure of will power attacked a man like a disease, developed gradually and reached its highest point just before the perpetration of the crime, continued with equal violence at the moment of the crime and for longer or shorter time after, according to the individual case, and then passed off like any other disease. The question whether the disease gives rise to the crime, or whether the crime from its own peculiar nature is always accompanied by something of the nature of disease, he did not yet feel able to decide. When he reached these conclusions, he decided that in his own case there could not be such a morbid reaction, that his reason and will would remain unimpaired at the time of carrying out his design, for the simple reason that his design was “not a crime....” We will omit all the process by means of which he arrived at this last conclusion; we have run too far ahead already.... We may add only that the practical, purely material difficulties of the affair occupied a secondary position in his mind. “One has but to keep all one’s will-power and reason to deal with them, and they will all be overcome at the time when once one has familiarised oneself with the minutest details of the business....” But this preparation had never been begun. His final decisions were what he came to trust least, and when the hour struck, it all came to pass quite differently, as it were accidentally and unexpectedly. One trifling circumstance upset his calculations, before he had even left the staircase. When he reached the landlady’s kitchen, the door of which was open as usual, he glanced cautiously in to see whether, in Shakuntala’s absence, the landlady herself was there, or if not, whether the door to her own room was closed, so that she might not peep out when he went in for the axe. But what was his amazement when he suddenly saw that Shakuntala was not only at home in the kitchen, but was occupied there, taking linen out of a basket and hanging it on a line. Seeing him, she left off hanging the clothes, turned to him and stared at him all the time he was passing. He turned away his eyes, and walked past as though he noticed nothing. But it was the end of everything; he had not the axe! He was overwhelmed. “What made me think,” he reflected, as he went under the gateway, “what made me think that she would be sure not to be at home at that moment! Why, why, why did I assume this so certainly?” He was crushed and even humiliated. He could have laughed at himself in his anger.... A dull animal rage boiled within him. He stood hesitating in the gateway. To go into the street, to go a walk for appearance’ sake was revolting; to go back to his room, even more revolting. “And what a chance I have lost for ever!” he muttered, standing aimlessly in the gateway, just opposite the porter’s little dark room, which was also open. Suddenly he started. From the porter’s room, two paces away from him, something shining under the bench to the right caught his eye.... He looked about him--nobody. He approached the room on tiptoe, went down two steps into it and in a faint voice called the porter. “Yes, not at home! Somewhere near though, in the yard, for the door is wide open.” He dashed to the axe (it was an axe) and pulled it out from under the bench, where it lay between two chunks of wood; at once, before going out, he made it fast in the noose, he thrust both hands into his pockets and went out of the room; no one had noticed him! “When reason fails, the devil helps!” he thought with a strange grin. This chance raised his spirits extraordinarily. He walked along quietly and sedately, without hurry, to avoid awakening suspicion. He scarcely looked at the passers-by, tried to escape looking at their faces at all, and to be as little noticeable as possible. Suddenly he thought of his hat. “Good heavens! I had the money the day before yesterday and did not get a cap to wear instead!” A curse rose from the bottom of his soul. Glancing out of the corner of his eye into a shop, he saw by a clock on the wall that it was ten minutes past seven. He had to make haste and at the same time to go someway round, so as to approach the house from the other side.... When he had happened to imagine all this beforehand, he had sometimes thought that he would be very much afraid. But he was not very much afraid now, was not afraid at all, indeed. His mind was even occupied by irrelevant matters, but by nothing for long. As he passed the Yusupov garden, he was deeply absorbed in considering the building of great fountains, and of their refreshing effect on the atmosphere in all the squares. By degrees he passed to the conviction that if the summer garden were extended to the field of Mars, and perhaps joined to the garden of the Mihailovsky Palace, it would be a splendid thing and a great benefit to the town. Then he was interested by the question why in all great towns men are not simply driven by necessity, but in some peculiar way inclined to live in those parts of the town where there are no gardens nor fountains; where there is most dirt and smell and all sorts of nastiness. Then his own walks through the Hay Market came back to his mind, and for a moment he waked up to reality. “What nonsense!” he thought, “better think of nothing at all!” “So probably men led to execution clutch mentally at every object that meets them on the way,” flashed through his mind, but simply flashed, like lightning; he made haste to dismiss this thought.... And by now he was near; here was the house, here was the gate. Suddenly a clock somewhere struck once. “What! can it be half-past seven? Impossible, it must be fast!” Luckily for him, everything went well again at the gates. At that very moment, as though expressly for his benefit, a huge waggon of hay had just driven in at the gate, completely screening him as he passed under the gateway, and the waggon had scarcely had time to drive through into the yard, before he had slipped in a flash to the right. On the other side of the waggon he could hear shouting and quarrelling; but no one noticed him and no one met him. Many windows looking into that huge quadrangular yard were open at that moment, but he did not raise his head--he had not the strength to. The staircase leading to the old woman’s room was close by, just on the right of the gateway. He was already on the stairs.... Drawing a breath, pressing his hand against his throbbing heart, and once more feeling for the axe and setting it straight, he began softly and cautiously ascending the stairs, listening every minute. But the stairs, too, were quite deserted; all the doors were shut; he met no one. One flat indeed on the first floor was wide open and painters were at work in it, but they did not glance at him. He stood still, thought a minute and went on. “Of course it would be better if they had not been here, but... it’s two storeys above them.” And there was the fourth storey, here was the door, here was the flat opposite, the empty one. The flat underneath the old woman’s was apparently empty also; the visiting card nailed on the door had been torn off--they had gone away!... He was out of breath. For one instant the thought floated through his mind “Shall I go back?” But he made no answer and began listening at the old woman’s door, a dead silence. Then he listened again on the staircase, listened long and intently... then looked about him for the last time, pulled himself together, drew himself up, and once more tried the axe in the noose. “Am I very pale?” he wondered. “Am I not evidently agitated? She is mistrustful.... Had I better wait a little longer... till my heart leaves off thumping?” But his heart did not leave off. On the contrary, as though to spite him, it throbbed more and more violently. He could stand it no longer, he slowly put out his hand to the bell and rang. Half a minute later he rang again, more loudly. No answer. To go on ringing was useless and out of place. The old woman was, of course, at home, but she was suspicious and alone. He had some knowledge of her habits... and once more he put his ear to the door. Either his senses were peculiarly keen (which it is difficult to suppose), or the sound was really very distinct. Anyway, he suddenly heard something like the cautious touch of a hand on the lock and the rustle of a skirt at the very door. Someone was standing stealthily close to the lock and just as he was doing on the outside was secretly listening within, and seemed to have her ear to the door.... He moved a little on purpose and muttered something aloud that he might not have the appearance of hiding, then rang a third time, but quietly, soberly, and without impatience, Recalling it afterwards, that moment stood out in his mind vividly, distinctly, for ever; he could not make out how he had had such cunning, for his mind was as it were clouded at moments and he was almost unconscious of his body.... An instant later he heard the latch unfastened. CHAPTER VII The door was as before opened a tiny crack, and again two sharp and suspicious eyes stared at him out of the darkness. Then Manju lost his head and nearly made a great mistake. Fearing the old woman would be frightened by their being alone, and not hoping that the sight of him would disarm her suspicions, he took hold of the door and drew it towards him to prevent the old woman from attempting to shut it again. Seeing this she did not pull the door back, but she did not let go the handle so that he almost dragged her out with it on to the stairs. Seeing that she was standing in the doorway not allowing him to pass, he advanced straight upon her. She stepped back in alarm, tried to say something, but seemed unable to speak and stared with open eyes at him. “Good evening, Tanvi Lara,” he began, trying to speak easily, but his voice would not obey him, it broke and shook. “I have come... I have brought something... but we’d better come in... to the light....” And leaving her, he passed straight into the room uninvited. The old woman ran after him; her tongue was unloosed. “Good heavens! What it is? Who is it? What do you want?” “Why, Tanvi Lara, you know me... Manju... here, I brought you the pledge I promised the other day...” And he held out the pledge. The old woman glanced for a moment at the pledge, but at once stared in the eyes of her uninvited visitor. She looked intently, maliciously and mistrustfully. A minute passed; he even fancied something like a sneer in her eyes, as though she had already guessed everything. He felt that he was losing his head, that he was almost frightened, so frightened that if she were to look like that and not say a word for another half minute, he thought he would have run away from her. “Why do you look at me as though you did not know me?” he said suddenly, also with malice. “Take it if you like, if not I’ll go elsewhere, I am in a hurry.” He had not even thought of saying this, but it was suddenly said of itself. The old woman recovered herself, and her visitor’s resolute tone evidently restored her confidence. “But why, my good sir, all of a minute.... What is it?” she asked, looking at the pledge. “The silver cigarette case; I spoke of it last time, you know.” She held out her hand. “But how pale you are, to be sure... and your hands are trembling too? Have you been bathing, or what?” “Fever,” he answered abruptly. “You can’t help getting pale... if you’ve nothing to eat,” he added, with difficulty articulating the words. His strength was failing him again. But his answer sounded like the truth; the old woman took the pledge. “What is it?” she asked once more, scanning Manju intently, and weighing the pledge in her hand. “A thing... cigarette case.... Silver.... Look at it.” “It does not seem somehow like silver.... How he has wrapped it up!” Trying to untie the string and turning to the window, to the light (all her windows were shut, in spite of the stifling heat), she left him altogether for some seconds and stood with her back to him. He unbuttoned his coat and freed the axe from the noose, but did not yet take it out altogether, simply holding it in his right hand under the coat. His hands were fearfully weak, he felt them every moment growing more numb and more wooden. He was afraid he would let the axe slip and fall.... A sudden giddiness came over him. “But what has he tied it up like this for?” the old woman cried with vexation and moved towards him. He had not a minute more to lose. He pulled the axe quite out, swung it with both arms, scarcely conscious of himself, and almost without effort, almost mechanically, brought the blunt side down on her head. He seemed not to use his own strength in this. But as soon as he had once brought the axe down, his strength returned to him. The old woman was as always bareheaded. Her thin, light hair, streaked with grey, thickly smeared with grease, was plaited in a rat’s tail and fastened by a broken horn comb which stood out on the nape of her neck. As she was so short, the blow fell on the very top of her skull. She cried out, but very faintly, and suddenly sank all of a heap on the floor, raising her hands to her head. In one hand she still held “the pledge.” Then he dealt her another and another blow with the blunt side and on the same spot. The blood gushed as from an overturned glass, the body fell back. He stepped back, let it fall, and at once bent over her face; she was dead. Her eyes seemed to be starting out of their sockets, the brow and the whole face were drawn and contorted convulsively. He laid the axe on the ground near the dead body and felt at once in her pocket (trying to avoid the streaming body)--the same right-hand pocket from which she had taken the key on his last visit. He was in full possession of his faculties, free from confusion or giddiness, but his hands were still trembling. He remembered afterwards that he had been particularly collected and careful, trying all the time not to get smeared with blood.... He pulled out the keys at once, they were all, as before, in one bunch on a steel ring. He ran at once into the bedroom with them. It was a very small room with a whole shrine of holy images. Against the other wall stood a big bed, very clean and covered with a silk patchwork wadded quilt. Against a third wall was a chest of drawers. Strange to say, so soon as he began to fit the keys into the chest, so soon as he heard their jingling, a convulsive shudder passed over him. He suddenly felt tempted again to give it all up and go away. But that was only for an instant; it was too late to go back. He positively smiled at himself, when suddenly another terrifying idea occurred to his mind. He suddenly fancied that the old woman might be still alive and might recover her senses. Leaving the keys in the chest, he ran back to the body, snatched up the axe and lifted it once more over the old woman, but did not bring it down. There was no doubt that she was dead. Bending down and examining her again more closely, he saw clearly that the skull was broken and even battered in on one side. He was about to feel it with his finger, but drew back his hand and indeed it was evident without that. Meanwhile there was a perfect pool of blood. All at once he noticed a string on her neck; he tugged at it, but the string was strong and did not snap and besides, it was soaked with blood. He tried to pull it out from the front of the dress, but something held it and prevented its coming. In his impatience he raised the axe again to cut the string from above on the body, but did not dare, and with difficulty, smearing his hand and the axe in the blood, after two minutes’ hurried effort, he cut the string and took it off without touching the body with the axe; he was not mistaken--it was a purse. On the string were two crosses, one of Cyprus wood and one of copper, and an image in silver filigree, and with them a small greasy chamois leather purse with a steel rim and ring. The purse was stuffed very full; Manju thrust it in his pocket without looking at it, flung the crosses on the old woman’s body and rushed back into the bedroom, this time taking the axe with him. He was in terrible haste, he snatched the keys, and began trying them again. But he was unsuccessful. They would not fit in the locks. It was not so much that his hands were shaking, but that he kept making mistakes; though he saw for instance that a key was not the right one and would not fit, still he tried to put it in. Suddenly he remembered and realised that the big key with the deep notches, which was hanging there with the small keys could not possibly belong to the chest of drawers (on his last visit this had struck him), but to some strong box, and that everything perhaps was hidden in that box. He left the chest of drawers, and at once felt under the bedstead, knowing that old women usually keep boxes under their beds. And so it was; there was a good-sized box under the bed, at least a yard in length, with an arched lid covered with red leather and studded with steel nails. The notched key fitted at once and unlocked it. At the top, under a white sheet, was a coat of red brocade lined with hareskin; under it was a silk dress, then a shawl and it seemed as though there was nothing below but clothes. The first thing he did was to wipe his blood-stained hands on the red brocade. “It’s red, and on red blood will be less noticeable,” the thought passed through his mind; then he suddenly came to himself. “Good Nidhi, am I going out of my senses?” he thought with terror. But no sooner did he touch the clothes than a gold watch slipped from under the fur coat. He made haste to turn them all over. There turned out to be various articles made of gold among the clothes--probably all pledges, unredeemed or waiting to be redeemed--bracelets, chains, ear-rings, pins and such things. Some were in cases, others simply wrapped in newspaper, carefully and exactly folded, and tied round with tape. Without any delay, he began filling up the pockets of his trousers and overcoat without examining or undoing the parcels and cases; but he had not time to take many.... He suddenly heard steps in the room where the old woman lay. He stopped short and was still as death. But all was quiet, so it must have been his fancy. All at once he heard distinctly a faint cry, as though someone had uttered a low broken moan. Then again dead silence for a minute or two. He sat squatting on his heels by the box and waited holding his breath. Suddenly he jumped up, seized the axe and ran out of the bedroom. In the middle of the room stood Kriti with a big bundle in her arms. She was gazing in stupefaction at her murdered sister, white as a sheet and seeming not to have the strength to cry out. Seeing him run out of the bedroom, she began faintly quivering all over, like a leaf, a shudder ran down her face; she lifted her hand, opened her mouth, but still did not scream. She began slowly backing away from him into the corner, staring intently, persistently at him, but still uttered no sound, as though she could not get breath to scream. He rushed at her with the axe; her mouth twitched piteously, as one sees babies’ mouths, when they begin to be frightened, stare intently at what frightens them and are on the point of screaming. And this hapless Kriti was so simple and had been so thoroughly crushed and scared that she did not even raise a hand to guard her face, though that was the most necessary and natural action at the moment, for the axe was raised over her face. She only put up her empty left hand, but not to her face, slowly holding it out before her as though motioning him away. The axe fell with the sharp edge just on the skull and split at one blow all the top of the head. She fell heavily at once. Manju completely lost his head, snatching up her bundle, dropped it again and ran into the entry. Fear gained more and more mastery over him, especially after this second, quite unexpected murder. He longed to run away from the place as fast as possible. And if at that moment he had been capable of seeing and reasoning more correctly, if he had been able to realise all the difficulties of his position, the hopelessness, the hideousness and the absurdity of it, if he could have understood how many obstacles and, perhaps, crimes he had still to overcome or to commit, to get out of that place and to make his way home, it is very possible that he would have flung up everything, and would have gone to give himself up, and not from fear, but from simple horror and loathing of what he had done. The feeling of loathing especially surged up within him and grew stronger every minute. He would not now have gone to the box or even into the room for anything in the world. But a sort of blankness, even dreaminess, had begun by degrees to take possession of him; at moments he forgot himself, or rather, forgot what was of importance, and caught at trifles. Glancing, however, into the kitchen and seeing a bucket half full of water on a bench, he bethought him of washing his hands and the axe. His hands were sticky with blood. He dropped the axe with the blade in the water, snatched a piece of soap that lay in a broken saucer on the window, and began washing his hands in the bucket. When they were clean, he took out the axe, washed the blade and spent a long time, about three minutes, washing the wood where there were spots of blood rubbing them with soap. Then he wiped it all with some linen that was hanging to dry on a line in the kitchen and then he was a long while attentively examining the axe at the window. There was no trace left on it, only the wood was still damp. He carefully hung the axe in the noose under his coat. Then as far as was possible, in the dim light in the kitchen, he looked over his overcoat, his trousers and his boots. At the first glance there seemed to be nothing but stains on the boots. He wetted the rag and rubbed the boots. But he knew he was not looking thoroughly, that there might be something quite noticeable that he was overlooking. He stood in the middle of the room, lost in thought. Dark agonising ideas rose in his mind--the idea that he was mad and that at that moment he was incapable of reasoning, of protecting himself, that he ought perhaps to be doing something utterly different from what he was now doing. “Good Nidhi!” he muttered “I must fly, fly,” and he rushed into the entry. But here a shock of terror awaited him such as he had never known before. He stood and gazed and could not believe his eyes: the door, the outer door from the stairs, at which he had not long before waited and rung, was standing unfastened and at least six inches open. No lock, no bolt, all the time, all that time! The old woman had not shut it after him perhaps as a precaution. But, good Nidhi! Why, he had seen Kriti afterwards! And how could he, how could he have failed to reflect that she must have come in somehow! She could not have come through the wall! He dashed to the door and fastened the latch. “But no, the wrong thing again! I must get away, get away....” He unfastened the latch, opened the door and began listening on the staircase. He listened a long time. Somewhere far away, it might be in the gateway, two voices were loudly and shrilly shouting, quarrelling and scolding. “What are they about?” He waited patiently. At last all was still, as though suddenly cut off; they had separated. He was meaning to go out, but suddenly, on the floor below, a door was noisily opened and someone began going downstairs humming a tune. “How is it they all make such a noise?” flashed through his mind. Once more he closed the door and waited. At last all was still, not a soul stirring. He was just taking a step towards the stairs when he heard fresh footsteps. The steps sounded very far off, at the very bottom of the stairs, but he remembered quite clearly and distinctly that from the first sound he began for some reason to suspect that this was someone coming _there_, to the fourth floor, to the old woman. Why? Were the sounds somehow peculiar, significant? The steps were heavy, even and unhurried. Now _he_ had passed the first floor, now he was mounting higher, it was growing more and more distinct! He could hear his heavy breathing. And now the third storey had been reached. Coming here! And it seemed to him all at once that he was turned to stone, that it was like a dream in which one is being pursued, nearly caught and will be killed, and is rooted to the spot and cannot even move one’s arms. At last when the unknown was mounting to the fourth floor, he suddenly started, and succeeded in slipping neatly and quickly back into the flat and closing the door behind him. Then he took the hook and softly, noiselessly, fixed it in the catch. Instinct helped him. When he had done this, he crouched holding his breath, by the door. The unknown visitor was by now also at the door. They were now standing opposite one another, as he had just before been standing with the old woman, when the door divided them and he was listening. The visitor panted several times. “He must be a big, fat man,” thought Manju, squeezing the axe in his hand. It seemed like a dream indeed. The visitor took hold of the bell and rang it loudly. As soon as the tin bell tinkled, Manju seemed to be aware of something moving in the room. For some seconds he listened quite seriously. The unknown rang again, waited and suddenly tugged violently and impatiently at the handle of the door. Manju gazed in horror at the hook shaking in its fastening, and in blank terror expected every minute that the fastening would be pulled out. It certainly did seem possible, so violently was he shaking it. He was tempted to hold the fastening, but _he_ might be aware of it. A giddiness came over him again. “I shall fall down!” flashed through his mind, but the unknown began to speak and he recovered himself at once. “What’s up? Are they asleep or murdered? D-damn them!” he bawled in a thick voice, “Hey, Tanvi Lara, old witch! Kriti Lara, hey, my beauty! open the door! Oh, damn them! Are they asleep or what?” And again, enraged, he tugged with all his might a dozen times at the bell. He must certainly be a man of authority and an intimate acquaintance. At this moment light hurried steps were heard not far off, on the stairs. Someone else was approaching. Manju had not heard them at first. “You don’t say there’s no one at home,” the new-comer cried in a cheerful, ringing voice, addressing the first visitor, who still went on pulling the bell. “Good evening, Prerna.” “From his voice he must be quite young,” thought Manju. “Who the devil can tell? I’ve almost broken the lock,” answered Prerna. “But how do you come to know me?” “Why! The day before yesterday I beat you three times running at billiards at Gambrinus’.” “Oh!” “So they are not at home? That’s queer. It’s awfully stupid though. Where could the old woman have gone? I’ve come on business.” “Yes; and I have business with her, too.” “Well, what can we do? Go back, I suppose, Rajat--aie! And I was hoping to get some money!” cried the young man. “We must give it up, of course, but what did she fix this time for? The old witch fixed the time for me to come herself. It’s out of my way. And where the devil she can have got to, I can’t make out. She sits here from year’s end to year’s end, the old hag; her legs are bad and yet here all of a sudden she is out for a walk!” “Hadn’t we better ask the porter?” “What?” “Where she’s gone and when she’ll be back.” “Hm.... Damn it all!... We might ask.... But you know she never does go anywhere.” And he once more tugged at the door-handle. “Damn it all. There’s nothing to be done, we must go!” “Stay!” cried the young man suddenly. “Do you see how the door shakes if you pull it?” “Well?” “That shows it’s not locked, but fastened with the hook! Do you hear how the hook clanks?” “Well?” “Why, don’t you see? That proves that one of them is at home. If they were all out, they would have locked the door from the outside with the key and not with the hook from inside. There, do you hear how the hook is clanking? To fasten the hook on the inside they must be at home, don’t you see. So there they are sitting inside and don’t open the door!” “Well! And so they must be!” cried Prerna, astonished. “What are they about in there?” And he began furiously shaking the door. “Stay!” cried the young man again. “Don’t pull at it! There must be something wrong.... Here, you’ve been ringing and pulling at the door and still they don’t open! So either they’ve both fainted or...” “What?” “I tell you what. Let’s go fetch the porter, let him wake them up.” “All right.” Both were going down. “Stay. You stop here while I run down for the porter.” “What for?” “Well, you’d better.” “All right.” “I’m studying the law you see! It’s evident, e-vi-dent there’s something wrong here!” the young man cried hotly, and he ran downstairs. Prerna remained. Once more he softly touched the bell which gave one tinkle, then gently, as though reflecting and looking about him, began touching the door-handle pulling it and letting it go to make sure once more that it was only fastened by the hook. Then puffing and panting he bent down and began looking at the keyhole: but the key was in the lock on the inside and so nothing could be seen. Manju stood keeping tight hold of the axe. He was in a sort of delirium. He was even making ready to fight when they should come in. While they were knocking and talking together, the idea several times occurred to him to end it all at once and shout to them through the door. Now and then he was tempted to swear at them, to jeer at them, while they could not open the door! “Only make haste!” was the thought that flashed through his mind. “But what the devil is he about?...” Time was passing, one minute, and another--no one came. Prerna began to be restless. “What the devil?” he cried suddenly and in impatience deserting his sentry duty, he, too, went down, hurrying and thumping with his heavy boots on the stairs. The steps died away. “Good heavens! What am I to do?” Manju unfastened the hook, opened the door--there was no sound. Abruptly, without any thought at all, he went out, closing the door as thoroughly as he could, and went downstairs. He had gone down three flights when he suddenly heard a loud voice below--where could he go! There was nowhere to hide. He was just going back to the flat. “Hey there! Catch the brute!” Somebody dashed out of a flat below, shouting, and rather fell than ran down the stairs, bawling at the top of his voice. “Sunny! Sunny! Sunny! Sunny! Sunny! Blast him!” The shout ended in a shriek; the last sounds came from the yard; all was still. But at the same instant several men talking loud and fast began noisily mounting the stairs. There were three or four of them. He distinguished the ringing voice of the young man. “Hey!” Filled with despair he went straight to meet them, feeling “come what must!” If they stopped him--all was lost; if they let him pass--all was lost too; they would remember him. They were approaching; they were only a flight from him--and suddenly deliverance! A few steps from him on the right, there was an empty flat with the door wide open, the flat on the second floor where the painters had been at work, and which, as though for his benefit, they had just left. It was they, no doubt, who had just run down, shouting. The floor had only just been painted, in the middle of the room stood a pail and a broken pot with paint and brushes. In one instant he had whisked in at the open door and hidden behind the wall and only in the nick of time; they had already reached the landing. Then they turned and went on up to the fourth floor, talking loudly. He waited, went out on tiptoe and ran down the stairs. No one was on the stairs, nor in the gateway. He passed quickly through the gateway and turned to the left in the street. He knew, he knew perfectly well that at that moment they were at the flat, that they were greatly astonished at finding it unlocked, as the door had just been fastened, that by now they were looking at the bodies, that before another minute had passed they would guess and completely realise that the murderer had just been there, and had succeeded in hiding somewhere, slipping by them and escaping. They would guess most likely that he had been in the empty flat, while they were going upstairs. And meanwhile he dared not quicken his pace much, though the next turning was still nearly a hundred yards away. “Should he slip through some gateway and wait somewhere in an unknown street? No, hopeless! Should he fling away the axe? Should he take a cab? Hopeless, hopeless!” At last he reached the turning. He turned down it more dead than alive. Here he was half way to safety, and he understood it; it was less risky because there was a great crowd of people, and he was lost in it like a grain of sand. But all he had suffered had so weakened him that he could scarcely move. Perspiration ran down him in drops, his neck was all wet. “My word, he has been going it!” someone shouted at him when he came out on the canal bank. He was only dimly conscious of himself now, and the farther he went the worse it was. He remembered however, that on coming out on to the canal bank, he was alarmed at finding few people there and so being more conspicuous, and he had thought of turning back. Though he was almost falling from fatigue, he went a long way round so as to get home from quite a different direction. He was not fully conscious when he passed through the gateway of his house! He was already on the staircase before he recollected the axe. And yet he had a very grave problem before him, to put it back and to escape observation as far as possible in doing so. He was of course incapable of reflecting that it might perhaps be far better not to restore the axe at all, but to drop it later on in somebody’s yard. But it all happened fortunately, the door of the porter’s room was closed but not locked, so that it seemed most likely that the porter was at home. But he had so completely lost all power of reflection that he walked straight to the door and opened it. If the porter had asked him, “What do you want?” he would perhaps have simply handed him the axe. But again the porter was not at home, and he succeeded in putting the axe back under the bench, and even covering it with the chunk of wood as before. He met no one, not a soul, afterwards on the way to his room; the landlady’s door was shut. When he was in his room, he flung himself on the sofa just as he was--he did not sleep, but sank into blank forgetfulness. If anyone had come into his room then, he would have jumped up at once and screamed. Scraps and shreds of thoughts were simply swarming in his brain, but he could not catch at one, he could not rest on one, in spite of all his efforts.... PART II CHAPTER I So he lay a very long while. Now and then he seemed to wake up, and at such moments he noticed that it was far into the night, but it did not occur to him to get up. At last he noticed that it was beginning to get light. He was lying on his back, still dazed from his recent oblivion. Fearful, despairing cries rose shrilly from the street, sounds which he heard every night, indeed, under his window after two o’clock. They woke him up now. “Ah! the drunken men are coming out of the taverns,” he thought, “it’s past two o’clock,” and at once he leaped up, as though someone had pulled him from the sofa. “What! Past two o’clock!” He sat down on the sofa--and instantly recollected everything! All at once, in one flash, he recollected everything. For the first moment he thought he was going mad. A dreadful chill came over him; but the chill was from the fever that had begun long before in his sleep. Now he was suddenly taken with violent shivering, so that his teeth chattered and all his limbs were shaking. He opened the door and began listening--everything in the house was asleep. With amazement he gazed at himself and everything in the room around him, wondering how he could have come in the night before without fastening the door, and have flung himself on the sofa without undressing, without even taking his hat off. It had fallen off and was lying on the floor near his pillow. “If anyone had come in, what would he have thought? That I’m drunk but...” He rushed to the window. There was light enough, and he began hurriedly looking himself all over from head to foot, all his clothes; were there no traces? But there was no doing it like that; shivering with cold, he began taking off everything and looking over again. He turned everything over to the last threads and rags, and mistrusting himself, went through his search three times. But there seemed to be nothing, no trace, except in one place, where some thick drops of congealed blood were clinging to the frayed edge of his trousers. He picked up a big claspknife and cut off the frayed threads. There seemed to be nothing more. Suddenly he remembered that the purse and the things he had taken out of the old woman’s box were still in his pockets! He had not thought till then of taking them out and hiding them! He had not even thought of them while he was examining his clothes! What next? Instantly he rushed to take them out and fling them on the table. When he had pulled out everything, and turned the pocket inside out to be sure there was nothing left, he carried the whole heap to the corner. The paper had come off the bottom of the wall and hung there in tatters. He began stuffing all the things into the hole under the paper: “They’re in! All out of sight, and the purse too!” he thought gleefully, getting up and gazing blankly at the hole which bulged out more than ever. Suddenly he shuddered all over with horror; “My Nidhi!” he whispered in despair: “what’s the matter with me? Is that hidden? Is that the way to hide things?” He had not reckoned on having trinkets to hide. He had only thought of money, and so had not prepared a hiding-place. “But now, now, what am I glad of?” he thought, “Is that hiding things? My reason’s deserting me--simply!” He sat down on the sofa in exhaustion and was at once shaken by another unbearable fit of shivering. Mechanically he drew from a chair beside him his old student’s winter coat, which was still warm though almost in rags, covered himself up with it and once more sank into drowsiness and delirium. He lost consciousness. Not more than five minutes had passed when he jumped up a second time, and at once pounced in a frenzy on his clothes again. “How could I go to sleep again with nothing done? Yes, yes; I have not taken the loop off the armhole! I forgot it, forgot a thing like that! Such a piece of evidence!” He pulled off the noose, hurriedly cut it to pieces and threw the bits among his linen under the pillow. “Pieces of torn linen couldn’t rouse suspicion, whatever happened; I think not, I think not, any way!” he repeated, standing in the middle of the room, and with painful concentration he fell to gazing about him again, at the floor and everywhere, trying to make sure he had not forgotten anything. The conviction that all his faculties, even memory, and the simplest power of reflection were failing him, began to be an insufferable torture. “Surely it isn’t beginning already! Surely it isn’t my punishment coming upon me? It is!” The frayed rags he had cut off his trousers were actually lying on the floor in the middle of the room, where anyone coming in would see them! “What is the matter with me!” he cried again, like one distraught. Then a strange idea entered his head; that, perhaps, all his clothes were covered with blood, that, perhaps, there were a great many stains, but that he did not see them, did not notice them because his perceptions were failing, were going to pieces... his reason was clouded.... Suddenly he remembered that there had been blood on the purse too. “Ah! Then there must be blood on the pocket too, for I put the wet purse in my pocket!” In a flash he had turned the pocket inside out and, yes!--there were traces, stains on the lining of the pocket! “So my reason has not quite deserted me, so I still have some sense and memory, since I guessed it of myself,” he thought triumphantly, with a deep sigh of relief; “it’s simply the weakness of fever, a moment’s delirium,” and he tore the whole lining out of the left pocket of his trousers. At that instant the sunlight fell on his left boot; on the sock which poked out from the boot, he fancied there were traces! He flung off his boots; “traces indeed! The tip of the sock was soaked with blood;” he must have unwarily stepped into that pool.... “But what am I to do with this now? Where am I to put the sock and rags and pocket?” He gathered them all up in his hands and stood in the middle of the room. “In the stove? But they would ransack the stove first of all. Burn them? But what can I burn them with? There are no matches even. No, better go out and throw it all away somewhere. Yes, better throw it away,” he repeated, sitting down on the sofa again, “and at once, this minute, without lingering...” But his head sank on the pillow instead. Again the unbearable icy shivering came over him; again he drew his coat over him. And for a long while, for some hours, he was haunted by the impulse to “go off somewhere at once, this moment, and fling it all away, so that it may be out of sight and done with, at once, at once!” Several times he tried to rise from the sofa, but could not. He was thoroughly waked up at last by a violent knocking at his door. “Open, do, are you dead or alive? He keeps sleeping here!” shouted Shakuntala, banging with her fist on the door. “For whole days together he’s snoring here like a dog! A dog he is too. Open I tell you. It’s past ten.” “Maybe he’s not at home,” said a man’s voice. “Ha! that’s the porter’s voice.... What does he want?” He jumped up and sat on the sofa. The beating of his heart was a positive pain. “Then who can have latched the door?” retorted Shakuntala. “He’s taken to bolting himself in! As if he were worth stealing! Open, you stupid, wake up!” “What do they want? Why the porter? All’s discovered. Resist or open? Come what may!...” He half rose, stooped forward and unlatched the door. His room was so small that he could undo the latch without leaving the bed. Yes; the porter and Shakuntala were standing there. Shakuntala stared at him in a strange way. He glanced with a defiant and desperate air at the porter, who without a word held out a grey folded paper sealed with bottle-wax. “A notice from the office,” he announced, as he gave him the paper. “From what office?” “A summons to the police office, of course. You know which office.” “To the police?... What for?...” “How can I tell? You’re sent for, so you go.” The man looked at him attentively, looked round the room and turned to go away. “He’s downright ill!” observed Shakuntala, not taking her eyes off him. The porter turned his head for a moment. “He’s been in a fever since yesterday,” she added. Manju made no response and held the paper in his hands, without opening it. “Don’t you get up then,” Shakuntala went on compassionately, seeing that he was letting his feet down from the sofa. “You’re ill, and so don’t go; there’s no such hurry. What have you got there?” He looked; in his right hand he held the shreds he had cut from his trousers, the sock, and the rags of the pocket. So he had been asleep with them in his hand. Afterwards reflecting upon it, he remembered that half waking up in his fever, he had grasped all this tightly in his hand and so fallen asleep again. “Look at the rags he’s collected and sleeps with them, as though he has got hold of a treasure...” And Shakuntala went off into her hysterical giggle. Instantly he thrust them all under his great coat and fixed his eyes intently upon her. Far as he was from being capable of rational reflection at that moment, he felt that no one would behave like that with a person who was going to be arrested. “But... the police?” “You’d better have some tea! Yes? I’ll bring it, there’s some left.” “No... I’m going; I’ll go at once,” he muttered, getting on to his feet. “Why, you’ll never get downstairs!” “Yes, I’ll go.” “As you please.” She followed the porter out. At once he rushed to the light to examine the sock and the rags. “There are stains, but not very noticeable; all covered with dirt, and rubbed and already discoloured. No one who had no suspicion could distinguish anything. Shakuntala from a distance could not have noticed, thank Nidhi!” Then with a tremor he broke the seal of the notice and began reading; he was a long while reading, before he understood. It was an ordinary summons from the district police-station to appear that day at half-past nine at the office of the district superintendent. “But when has such a thing happened? I never have anything to do with the police! And why just to-day?” he thought in agonising bewilderment. “Good Nidhi, only get it over soon!” He was flinging himself on his knees to pray, but broke into laughter--not at the idea of prayer, but at himself. He began, hurriedly dressing. “If I’m lost, I am lost, I don’t care! Shall I put the sock on?” he suddenly wondered, “it will get dustier still and the traces will be gone.” But no sooner had he put it on than he pulled it off again in loathing and horror. He pulled it off, but reflecting that he had no other socks, he picked it up and put it on again--and again he laughed. “That’s all conventional, that’s all relative, merely a way of looking at it,” he thought in a flash, but only on the top surface of his mind, while he was shuddering all over, “there, I’ve got it on! I have finished by getting it on!” But his laughter was quickly followed by despair. “No, it’s too much for me...” he thought. His legs shook. “From fear,” he muttered. His head swam and ached with fever. “It’s a trick! They want to decoy me there and confound me over everything,” he mused, as he went out on to the stairs--“the worst of it is I’m almost light-headed... I may blurt out something stupid...” On the stairs he remembered that he was leaving all the things just as they were in the hole in the wall, “and very likely, it’s on purpose to search when I’m out,” he thought, and stopped short. But he was possessed by such despair, such cynicism of misery, if one may so call it, that with a wave of his hand he went on. “Only to get it over!” In the street the heat was insufferable again; not a drop of rain had fallen all those days. Again dust, bricks and mortar, again the stench from the shops and pot-houses, again the drunken men, the Finnish pedlars and half-broken-down cabs. The sun shone straight in his eyes, so that it hurt him to look out of them, and he felt his head going round--as a man in a fever is apt to feel when he comes out into the street on a bright sunny day. When he reached the turning into _the_ street, in an agony of trepidation he looked down it... at _the_ house... and at once averted his eyes. “If they question me, perhaps I’ll simply tell,” he thought, as he drew near the police-station. The police-station was about a quarter of a mile off. It had lately been moved to new rooms on the fourth floor of a new house. He had been once for a moment in the old office but long ago. Turning in at the gateway, he saw on the right a flight of stairs which a peasant was mounting with a book in his hand. “A house-porter, no doubt; so then, the office is here,” and he began ascending the stairs on the chance. He did not want to ask questions of anyone. “I’ll go in, fall on my knees, and confess everything...” he thought, as he reached the fourth floor. The staircase was steep, narrow and all sloppy with dirty water. The kitchens of the flats opened on to the stairs and stood open almost the whole day. So there was a fearful smell and heat. The staircase was crowded with porters going up and down with their books under their arms, policemen, and persons of all sorts and both sexes. The door of the office, too, stood wide open. Peasants stood waiting within. There, too, the heat was stifling and there was a sickening smell of fresh paint and stale oil from the newly decorated rooms. After waiting a little, he decided to move forward into the next room. All the rooms were small and low-pitched. A fearful impatience drew him on and on. No one paid attention to him. In the second room some clerks sat writing, dressed hardly better than he was, and rather a queer-looking set. He went up to one of them. “What is it?” He showed the notice he had received. “You are a student?” the man asked, glancing at the notice. “Yes, formerly a student.” The clerk looked at him, but without the slightest interest. He was a particularly unkempt person with the look of a fixed idea in his eye. “There would be no getting anything out of him, because he has no interest in anything,” thought Manju. “Go in there to the head clerk,” said the clerk, pointing towards the furthest room. He went into that room--the fourth in order; it was a small room and packed full of people, rather better dressed than in the outer rooms. Among them were two ladies. One, poorly dressed in mourning, sat at the table opposite the chief clerk, writing something at his dictation. The other, a very stout, buxom woman with a purplish-red, blotchy face, excessively smartly dressed with a brooch on her bosom as big as a saucer, was standing on one side, apparently waiting for something. Manju thrust his notice upon the head clerk. The latter glanced at it, said: “Wait a minute,” and went on attending to the lady in mourning. He breathed more freely. “It can’t be that!” By degrees he began to regain confidence, he kept urging himself to have courage and be calm. “Some foolishness, some trifling carelessness, and I may betray myself! Hm... it’s a pity there’s no air here,” he added, “it’s stifling.... It makes one’s head dizzier than ever... and one’s mind too...” He was conscious of a terrible inner turmoil. He was afraid of losing his self-control; he tried to catch at something and fix his mind on it, something quite irrelevant, but he could not succeed in this at all. Yet the head clerk greatly interested him, he kept hoping to see through him and guess something from his face. He was a very young man, about two and twenty, with a dark mobile face that looked older than his years. He was fashionably dressed and foppish, with his hair parted in the middle, well combed and pomaded, and wore a number of rings on his well-scrubbed fingers and a gold chain on his waistcoat. He said a couple of words in French to a foreigner who was in the room, and said them fairly correctly. “Rajesh Lara, you can sit down,” he said casually to the gaily-dressed, purple-faced lady, who was still standing as though not venturing to sit down, though there was a chair beside her. “Ich danke,” said the latter, and softly, with a rustle of silk she sank into the chair. Her light blue dress trimmed with white lace floated about the table like an air-balloon and filled almost half the room. She smelt of scent. But she was obviously embarrassed at filling half the room and smelling so strongly of scent; and though her smile was impudent as well as cringing, it betrayed evident uneasiness. The lady in mourning had done at last, and got up. All at once, with some noise, an officer walked in very jauntily, with a peculiar swing of his shoulders at each step. He tossed his cockaded cap on the table and sat down in an easy-chair. The small lady positively skipped from her seat on seeing him, and fell to curtsying in a sort of ecstasy; but the officer took not the smallest notice of her, and she did not venture to sit down again in his presence. He was the assistant superintendent. He had a reddish moustache that stood out horizontally on each side of his face, and extremely small features, expressive of nothing much except a certain insolence. He looked askance and rather indignantly at Manju; he was so very badly dressed, and in spite of his humiliating position, his bearing was by no means in keeping with his clothes. Manju had unwarily fixed a very long and direct look on him, so that he felt positively affronted. “What do you want?” he shouted, apparently astonished that such a ragged fellow was not annihilated by the majesty of his glance. “I was summoned... by a notice...” Manju faltered. “For the recovery of money due, from _the student_,” the head clerk interfered hurriedly, tearing himself from his papers. “Here!” and he flung Manju a document and pointed out the place. “Read that!” “Money? What money?” thought Manju, “but... then... it’s certainly not _that_.” And he trembled with joy. He felt sudden intense indescribable relief. A load was lifted from his back. “And pray, what time were you directed to appear, sir?” shouted the assistant superintendent, seeming for some unknown reason more and more aggrieved. “You are told to come at nine, and now it’s twelve!” “The notice was only brought me a quarter of an hour ago,” Manju answered loudly over his shoulder. To his own surprise he, too, grew suddenly angry and found a certain pleasure in it. “And it’s enough that I have come here ill with fever.” “Kindly refrain from shouting!” “I’m not shouting, I’m speaking very quietly, it’s you who are shouting at me. I’m a student, and allow no one to shout at me.” The assistant superintendent was so furious that for the first minute he could only splutter inarticulately. He leaped up from his seat. “Be silent! You are in a government office. Don’t be impudent, sir!” “You’re in a government office, too,” cried Manju, “and you’re smoking a cigarette as well as shouting, so you are showing disrespect to all of us.” He felt an indescribable satisfaction at having said this. The head clerk looked at him with a smile. The angry assistant superintendent was obviously disconcerted. “That’s not your business!” he shouted at last with unnatural loudness. “Kindly make the declaration demanded of you. Show him. Alexandr Grigorievitch. There is a complaint against you! You don’t pay your debts! You’re a fine bird!” But Manju was not listening now; he had eagerly clutched at the paper, in haste to find an explanation. He read it once, and a second time, and still did not understand. “What is this?” he asked the head clerk. “It is for the recovery of money on an I O U, a writ. You must either pay it, with all expenses, costs and so on, or give a written declaration when you can pay it, and at the same time an undertaking not to leave the capital without payment, and nor to sell or conceal your property. The creditor is at liberty to sell your property, and proceed against you according to the law.” “But I... am not in debt to anyone!” “That’s not our business. Here, an I O U for a hundred and fifteen roubles, legally attested, and due for payment, has been brought us for recovery, given by you to the widow of the assessor Vicky, nine months ago, and paid over by the widow Vicky to one Mr. Shreya. We therefore summon you, hereupon.” “But she is my landlady!” “And what if she is your landlady?” The head clerk looked at him with a condescending smile of compassion, and at the same time with a certain triumph, as at a novice under fire for the first time--as though he would say: “Well, how do you feel now?” But what did he care now for an I O U, for a writ of recovery! Was that worth worrying about now, was it worth attention even! He stood, he read, he listened, he answered, he even asked questions himself, but all mechanically. The triumphant sense of security, of deliverance from overwhelming danger, that was what filled his whole soul that moment without thought for the future, without analysis, without suppositions or surmises, without doubts and without questioning. It was an instant of full, direct, purely instinctive joy. But at that very moment something like a thunderstorm took place in the office. The assistant superintendent, still shaken by Manju’s disrespect, still fuming and obviously anxious to keep up his wounded dignity, pounced on the unfortunate smart lady, who had been gazing at him ever since he came in with an exceedingly silly smile. “You shameful hussy!” he shouted suddenly at the top of his voice. (The lady in mourning had left the office.) “What was going on at your house last night? Eh! A disgrace again, you’re a scandal to the whole street. Fighting and drinking again. Do you want the house of correction? Why, I have warned you ten times over that I would not let you off the eleventh! And here you are again, again, you... you...!” The paper fell out of Manju’s hands, and he looked wildly at the smart lady who was so unceremoniously treated. But he soon saw what it meant, and at once began to find positive amusement in the scandal. He listened with pleasure, so that he longed to laugh and laugh... all his nerves were on edge. “Ilya Sidharth!” the head clerk was beginning anxiously, but stopped short, for he knew from experience that the enraged assistant could not be stopped except by force. As for the smart lady, at first she positively trembled before the storm. But, strange to say, the more numerous and violent the terms of abuse became, the more amiable she looked, and the more seductive the smiles she lavished on the terrible assistant. She moved uneasily, and curtsied incessantly, waiting impatiently for a chance of putting in her word: and at last she found it. “There was no sort of noise or fighting in my house, Mr. Captain,” she pattered all at once, like peas dropping, speaking Russian confidently, though with a strong Nikita accent, “and no sort of scandal, and his honour came drunk, and it’s the whole truth I am telling, Mr. Captain, and I am not to blame.... Mine is an honourable house, Mr. Captain, and honourable behaviour, Mr. Captain, and I always, always dislike any scandal myself. But he came quite tipsy, and asked for three bottles again, and then he lifted up one leg, and began playing the pianoforte with one foot, and that is not at all right in an honourable house, and he _ganz_ broke the piano, and it was very bad manners indeed and I said so. And he took up a bottle and began hitting everyone with it. And then I called the porter, and Abhishek came, and he took Abhishek and hit him in the eye; and he hit Dhruv in the eye, too, and gave me five slaps on the cheek. And it was so ungentlemanly in an honourable house, Mr. Captain, and I screamed. And he opened the window over the canal, and stood in the window, squealing like a little pig; it was a disgrace. The idea of squealing like a little pig at the window into the street! Fie upon him! And Abhishek pulled him away from the window by his coat, and it is true, Mr. Captain, he tore _sein rock_. And then he shouted that _man muss_ pay him fifteen roubles damages. And I did pay him, Mr. Captain, five roubles for _sein rock_. And he is an ungentlemanly visitor and caused all the scandal. ‘I will show you up,’ he said, ‘for I can write to all the papers about you.’” “Then he was an author?” “Yes, Mr. Captain, and what an ungentlemanly visitor in an honourable house....” “Now then! Enough! I have told you already...” “Ilya Sidharth!” the head clerk repeated significantly. The assistant glanced rapidly at him; the head clerk slightly shook his head. “... So I tell you this, most respectable Rajesh Lara, and I tell it you for the last time,” the assistant went on. “If there is a scandal in your honourable house once again, I will put you yourself in the lock-up, as it is called in polite society. Do you hear? So a literary man, an author took five roubles for his coat-tail in an ‘honourable house’? A nice set, these authors!” And he cast a contemptuous glance at Manju. “There was a scandal the other day in a restaurant, too. An author had eaten his dinner and would not pay; ‘I’ll write a satire on you,’ says he. And there was another of them on a steamer last week used the most disgraceful language to the respectable family of a civil councillor, his wife and daughter. And there was one of them turned out of a confectioner’s shop the other day. They are like that, authors, literary men, students, town-criers.... Rajeev! You get along! I shall look in upon you myself one day. Then you had better be careful! Do you hear?” With hurried deference, Rajesh Lara fell to curtsying in all directions, and so curtsied herself to the door. But at the door, she stumbled backwards against a good-looking officer with a fresh, open face and splendid thick fair whiskers. This was the superintendent of the district himself, Ashok Disha. Rajesh Lara made haste to curtsy almost to the ground, and with mincing little steps, she fluttered out of the office. “Again thunder and lightning--a hurricane!” said Ashok Disha to Ilya Sidharth in a civil and friendly tone. “You are aroused again, you are fuming again! I heard it on the stairs!” “Well, what then!” Ilya Sidharth drawled with gentlemanly nonchalance; and he walked with some papers to another table, with a jaunty swing of his shoulders at each step. “Here, if you will kindly look: an author, or a student, has been one at least, does not pay his debts, has given an I O U, won’t clear out of his room, and complaints are constantly being lodged against him, and here he has been pleased to make a protest against my smoking in his presence! He behaves like a cad himself, and just look at him, please. Here’s the gentleman, and very attractive he is!” “Poverty is not a vice, my friend, but we know you go off like powder, you can’t bear a slight, I daresay you took offence at something and went too far yourself,” continued Ashok Disha, turning affably to Manju. “But you were wrong there; he is a capital fellow, I assure you, but explosive, explosive! He gets hot, fires up, boils over, and no stopping him! And then it’s all over! And at the bottom he’s a heart of gold! His nickname in the regiment was the Explosive Lieutenant....” “And what a regiment it was, too,” cried Ilya Sidharth, much gratified at this agreeable banter, though still sulky. Manju had a sudden desire to say something exceptionally pleasant to them all. “Excuse me, Captain,” he began easily, suddenly addressing Ashok Disha, “will you enter into my position?... I am ready to ask pardon, if I have been ill-mannered. I am a poor student, sick and shattered (shattered was the word he used) by poverty. I am not studying, because I cannot keep myself now, but I shall get money.... I have a mother and sister in the province of X. They will send it to me, and I will pay. My landlady is a good-hearted woman, but she is so exasperated at my having lost my lessons, and not paying her for the last four months, that she does not even send up my dinner... and I don’t understand this I O U at all. She is asking me to pay her on this I O U. How am I to pay her? Judge for yourselves!...” “But that is not our business, you know,” the head clerk was observing. “Yes, yes. I perfectly agree with you. But allow me to explain...” Manju put in again, still addressing Ashok Disha, but trying his best to address Ilya Sidharth also, though the latter persistently appeared to be rummaging among his papers and to be contemptuously oblivious of him. “Allow me to explain that I have been living with her for nearly three years and at first... at first... for why should I not confess it, at the very beginning I promised to marry her daughter, it was a verbal promise, freely given... she was a girl... indeed, I liked her, though I was not in love with her... a youthful affair in fact... that is, I mean to say, that my landlady gave me credit freely in those days, and I led a life of... I was very heedless...” “Nobody asks you for these personal details, sir, we’ve no time to waste,” Ilya Sidharth interposed roughly and with a note of triumph; but Manju stopped him hotly, though he suddenly found it exceedingly difficult to speak. “But excuse me, excuse me. It is for me to explain... how it all happened... In my turn... though I agree with you... it is unnecessary. But a year ago, the girl died of typhus. I remained lodging there as before, and when my landlady moved into her present quarters, she said to me... and in a friendly way... that she had complete trust in me, but still, would I not give her an I O U for one hundred and fifteen roubles, all the debt I owed her. She said if only I gave her that, she would trust me again, as much as I liked, and that she would never, never--those were her own words--make use of that I O U till I could pay of myself... and now, when I have lost my lessons and have nothing to eat, she takes action against me. What am I to say to that?” “All these affecting details are no business of ours.” Ilya Sidharth interrupted rudely. “You must give a written undertaking but as for your love affairs and all these tragic events, we have nothing to do with that.” “Come now... you are harsh,” muttered Ashok Disha, sitting down at the table and also beginning to write. He looked a little ashamed. “Write!” said the head clerk to Manju. “Write what?” the latter asked, gruffly. “I will dictate to you.” Manju fancied that the head clerk treated him more casually and contemptuously after his speech, but strange to say he suddenly felt completely indifferent to anyone’s opinion, and this revulsion took place in a flash, in one instant. If he had cared to think a little, he would have been amazed indeed that he could have talked to them like that a minute before, forcing his feelings upon them. And where had those feelings come from? Now if the whole room had been filled, not with police officers, but with those nearest and dearest to him, he would not have found one human word for them, so empty was his heart. A gloomy sensation of agonising, everlasting solitude and remoteness, took conscious form in his soul. It was not the meanness of his sentimental effusions before Ilya Sidharth, nor the meanness of the latter’s triumph over him that had caused this sudden revulsion in his heart. Oh, what had he to do now with his own baseness, with all these petty vanities, officers, Nikita women, debts, police-offices? If he had been sentenced to be burnt at that moment, he would not have stirred, would hardly have heard the sentence to the end. Something was happening to him entirely new, sudden and unknown. It was not that he understood, but he felt clearly with all the intensity of sensation that he could never more appeal to these people in the police-office with sentimental effusions like his recent outburst, or with anything whatever; and that if they had been his own brothers and sisters and not police-officers, it would have been utterly out of the question to appeal to them in any circumstance of life. He had never experienced such a strange and awful sensation. And what was most agonising--it was more a sensation than a conception or idea, a direct sensation, the most agonising of all the sensations he had known in his life. The head clerk began dictating to him the usual form of declaration, that he could not pay, that he undertook to do so at a future date, that he would not leave the town, nor sell his property, and so on. “But you can’t write, you can hardly hold the pen,” observed the head clerk, looking with curiosity at Manju. “Are you ill?” “Yes, I am giddy. Go on!” “That’s all. Sign it.” The head clerk took the paper, and turned to attend to others. Manju gave back the pen; but instead of getting up and going away, he put his elbows on the table and pressed his head in his hands. He felt as if a nail were being driven into his skull. A strange idea suddenly occurred to him, to get up at once, to go up to Ashok Disha, and tell him everything that had happened yesterday, and then to go with him to his lodgings and to show him the things in the hole in the corner. The impulse was so strong that he got up from his seat to carry it out. “Hadn’t I better think a minute?” flashed through his mind. “No, better cast off the burden without thinking.” But all at once he stood still, rooted to the spot. Ashok Disha was talking eagerly with Ilya Sidharth, and the words reached him: “It’s impossible, they’ll both be released. To begin with, the whole story contradicts itself. Why should they have called the porter, if it had been their doing? To inform against themselves? Or as a blind? No, that would be too cunning! Besides, Mansi, the student, was seen at the gate by both the porters and a woman as he went in. He was walking with three friends, who left him only at the gate, and he asked the porters to direct him, in the presence of the friends. Now, would he have asked his way if he had been going with such an object? As for Prerna, he spent half an hour at the silversmith’s below, before he went up to the old woman and he left him at exactly a quarter to eight. Now just consider...” “But excuse me, how do you explain this contradiction? They state themselves that they knocked and the door was locked; yet three minutes later when they went up with the porter, it turned out the door was unfastened.” “That’s just it; the murderer must have been there and bolted himself in; and they’d have caught him for a certainty if Prerna had not been an ass and gone to look for the porter too. _He_ must have seized the interval to get downstairs and slip by them somehow. Prerna keeps crossing himself and saying: ‘If I had been there, he would have jumped out and killed me with his axe.’ He is going to have a thanksgiving service--ha, ha!” “And no one saw the murderer?” “They might well not see him; the house is a regular Noah’s Ark,” said the head clerk, who was listening. “It’s clear, quite clear,” Ashok Disha repeated warmly. “No, it is anything but clear,” Ilya Sidharth maintained. Manju picked up his hat and walked towards the door, but he did not reach it.... When he recovered consciousness, he found himself sitting in a chair, supported by someone on the right side, while someone else was standing on the left, holding a yellowish glass filled with yellow water, and Ashok Disha standing before him, looking intently at him. He got up from the chair. “What’s this? Are you ill?” Ashok Disha asked, rather sharply. “He could hardly hold his pen when he was signing,” said the head clerk, settling back in his place, and taking up his work again. “Have you been ill long?” cried Ilya Sidharth from his place, where he, too, was looking through papers. He had, of course, come to look at the sick man when he fainted, but retired at once when he recovered. “Since yesterday,” muttered Manju in reply. “Did you go out yesterday?” “Yes.” “Though you were ill?” “Yes.” “At what time?” “About seven.” “And where did you go, may I ask?” “Along the street.” “Short and clear.” Manju, white as a handkerchief, had answered sharply, jerkily, without dropping his black feverish eyes before Ilya Sidharth’s stare. “He can scarcely stand upright. And you...” Ashok Disha was beginning. “No matter,” Ilya Sidharth pronounced rather peculiarly. Ashok Disha would have made some further protest, but glancing at the head clerk who was looking very hard at him, he did not speak. There was a sudden silence. It was strange. “Very well, then,” concluded Ilya Sidharth, “we will not detain you.” Manju went out. He caught the sound of eager conversation on his departure, and above the rest rose the questioning voice of Ashok Disha. In the street, his faintness passed off completely. “A search--there will be a search at once,” he repeated to himself, hurrying home. “The brutes! they suspect.” His former terror mastered him completely again. CHAPTER II “And what if there has been a search already? What if I find them in my room?” But here was his room. Nothing and no one in it. No one had peeped in. Even Shakuntala had not touched it. But heavens! how could he have left all those things in the hole? He rushed to the corner, slipped his hand under the paper, pulled the things out and lined his pockets with them. There were eight articles in all: two little boxes with ear-rings or something of the sort, he hardly looked to see; then four small leather cases. There was a chain, too, merely wrapped in newspaper and something else in newspaper, that looked like a decoration.... He put them all in the different pockets of his overcoat, and the remaining pocket of his trousers, trying to conceal them as much as possible. He took the purse, too. Then he went out of his room, leaving the door open. He walked quickly and resolutely, and though he felt shattered, he had his senses about him. He was afraid of pursuit, he was afraid that in another half-hour, another quarter of an hour perhaps, instructions would be issued for his pursuit, and so at all costs, he must hide all traces before then. He must clear everything up while he still had some strength, some reasoning power left him.... Where was he to go? That had long been settled: “Fling them into the canal, and all traces hidden in the water, the thing would be at an end.” So he had decided in the night of his delirium when several times he had had the impulse to get up and go away, to make haste, and get rid of it all. But to get rid of it, turned out to be a very difficult task. He wandered along the bank of the Ekaterininsky Canal for half an hour or more and looked several times at the steps running down to the water, but he could not think of carrying out his plan; either rafts stood at the steps’ edge, and women were washing clothes on them, or boats were moored there, and people were swarming everywhere. Moreover he could be seen and noticed from the banks on all sides; it would look suspicious for a man to go down on purpose, stop, and throw something into the water. And what if the boxes were to float instead of sinking? And of course they would. Even as it was, everyone he met seemed to stare and look round, as if they had nothing to do but to watch him. “Why is it, or can it be my fancy?” he thought. At last the thought struck him that it might be better to go to the Saajan. There were not so many people there, he would be less observed, and it would be more convenient in every way, above all it was further off. He wondered how he could have been wandering for a good half-hour, worried and anxious in this dangerous past without thinking of it before. And that half-hour he had lost over an irrational plan, simply because he had thought of it in delirium! He had become extremely absent and forgetful and he was aware of it. He certainly must make haste. He walked towards the Saajan along V---- Prospect, but on the way another idea struck him. “Why to the Saajan? Would it not be better to go somewhere far off, to the Islands again, and there hide the things in some solitary place, in a wood or under a bush, and mark the spot perhaps?” And though he felt incapable of clear judgment, the idea seemed to him a sound one. But he was not destined to go there. For coming out of V---- Prospect towards the square, he saw on the left a passage leading between two blank walls to a courtyard. On the right hand, the blank unwhitewashed wall of a four-storied house stretched far into the court; on the left, a wooden hoarding ran parallel with it for twenty paces into the court, and then turned sharply to the left. Here was a deserted fenced-off place where rubbish of different sorts was lying. At the end of the court, the corner of a low, smutty, stone shed, apparently part of some workshop, peeped from behind the hoarding. It was probably a carriage builder’s or carpenter’s shed; the whole place from the entrance was black with coal dust. Here would be the place to throw it, he thought. Not seeing anyone in the yard, he slipped in, and at once saw near the gate a sink, such as is often put in yards where there are many workmen or cab-drivers; and on the hoarding above had been scribbled in chalk the time-honoured witticism, “Standing here strictly forbidden.” This was all the better, for there would be nothing suspicious about his going in. “Here I could throw it all in a heap and get away!” Looking round once more, with his hand already in his pocket, he noticed against the outer wall, between the entrance and the sink, a big unhewn stone, weighing perhaps sixty pounds. The other side of the wall was a street. He could hear passers-by, always numerous in that part, but he could not be seen from the entrance, unless someone came in from the street, which might well happen indeed, so there was need of haste. He bent down over the stone, seized the top of it firmly in both hands, and using all his strength turned it over. Under the stone was a small hollow in the ground, and he immediately emptied his pocket into it. The purse lay at the top, and yet the hollow was not filled up. Then he seized the stone again and with one twist turned it back, so that it was in the same position again, though it stood a very little higher. But he scraped the earth about it and pressed it at the edges with his foot. Nothing could be noticed. Then he went out, and turned into the square. Again an intense, almost unbearable joy overwhelmed him for an instant, as it had in the police-office. “I have buried my tracks! And who, who can think of looking under that stone? It has been lying there most likely ever since the house was built, and will lie as many years more. And if it were found, who would think of me? It is all over! No clue!” And he laughed. Yes, he remembered that he began laughing a thin, nervous noiseless laugh, and went on laughing all the time he was crossing the square. But when he reached the K---- Boulevard where two days before he had come upon that girl, his laughter suddenly ceased. Other ideas crept into his mind. He felt all at once that it would be loathsome to pass that seat on which after the girl was gone, he had sat and pondered, and that it would be hateful, too, to meet that whiskered policeman to whom he had given the twenty copecks: “Damn him!” He walked, looking about him angrily and distractedly. All his ideas now seemed to be circling round some single point, and he felt that there really was such a point, and that now, now, he was left facing that point--and for the first time, indeed, during the last two months. “Damn it all!” he thought suddenly, in a fit of ungovernable fury. “If it has begun, then it has begun. Hang the new life! Good Lord, how stupid it is!... And what lies I told to-day! How despicably I fawned upon that wretched Ilya Sidharth! But that is all folly! What do I care for them all, and my fawning upon them! It is not that at all! It is not that at all!” Suddenly he stopped; a new utterly unexpected and exceedingly simple question perplexed and bitterly confounded him. “If it all has really been done deliberately and not idiotically, if I really had a certain and definite object, how is it I did not even glance into the purse and don’t know what I had there, for which I have undergone these agonies, and have deliberately undertaken this base, filthy degrading business? And here I wanted at once to throw into the water the purse together with all the things which I had not seen either... how’s that?” Yes, that was so, that was all so. Yet he had known it all before, and it was not a new question for him, even when it was decided in the night without hesitation and consideration, as though so it must be, as though it could not possibly be otherwise.... Yes, he had known it all, and understood it all; it surely had all been settled even yesterday at the moment when he was bending over the box and pulling the jewel-cases out of it.... Yes, so it was. “It is because I am very ill,” he decided grimly at last, “I have been worrying and fretting myself, and I don’t know what I am doing.... Yesterday and the day before yesterday and all this time I have been worrying myself.... I shall get well and I shall not worry.... But what if I don’t get well at all? Good Nidhi, how sick I am of it all!” He walked on without resting. He had a terrible longing for some distraction, but he did not know what to do, what to attempt. A new overwhelming sensation was gaining more and more mastery over him every moment; this was an immeasurable, almost physical, repulsion for everything surrounding him, an obstinate, malignant feeling of hatred. All who met him were loathsome to him--he loathed their faces, their movements, their gestures. If anyone had addressed him, he felt that he might have spat at him or bitten him.... He stopped suddenly, on coming out on the bank of the Little Saajan, near the bridge to Vassilyevsky Ostrov. “Why, he lives here, in that house,” he thought, “why, I have not come to Rakul of my own accord! Here it’s the same thing over again.... Very interesting to know, though; have I come on purpose or have I simply walked here by chance? Never mind, I said the day before yesterday that I would go and see him the day _after_; well, and so I will! Besides I really cannot go further now.” He went up to Rakul’s room on the fifth floor. The latter was at home in his garret, busily writing at the moment, and he opened the door himself. It was four months since they had seen each other. Rakul was sitting in a ragged dressing-gown, with slippers on his bare feet, unkempt, unshaven and unwashed. His face showed surprise. “Is it you?” he cried. He looked his comrade up and down; then after a brief pause, he whistled. “As hard up as all that! Why, brother, you’ve cut me out!” he added, looking at Manju’s rags. “Come sit down, you are tired, I’ll be bound.” And when he had sunk down on the American leather sofa, which was in even worse condition than his own, Rakul saw at once that his visitor was ill. “Why, you are seriously ill, do you know that?” He began feeling his pulse. Manju pulled away his hand. “Never mind,” he said, “I have come for this: I have no lessons.... I wanted,... but I don’t really want lessons....” “But I say! You are delirious, you know!” Rakul observed, watching him carefully. “No, I am not.” Manju got up from the sofa. As he had mounted the stairs to Rakul’s, he had not realised that he would be meeting his friend face to face. Now, in a flash, he knew, that what he was least of all disposed for at that moment was to be face to face with anyone in the wide world. His spleen rose within him. He almost choked with rage at himself as soon as he crossed Rakul’s threshold. “Good-bye,” he said abruptly, and walked to the door. “Stop, stop! You queer fish.” “I don’t want to,” said the other, again pulling away his hand. “Then why the devil have you come? Are you mad, or what? Why, this is... almost insulting! I won’t let you go like that.” “Well, then, I came to you because I know no one but you who could help... to begin... because you are kinder than anyone--cleverer, I mean, and can judge... and now I see that I want nothing. Do you hear? Nothing at all... no one’s services... no one’s sympathy. I am by myself... alone. Come, that’s enough. Leave me alone.” “Stay a minute, you sweep! You are a perfect madman. As you like for all I care. I have no lessons, do you see, and I don’t care about that, but there’s a bookseller, Ramesh--and he takes the place of a lesson. I would not exchange him for five lessons. He’s doing publishing of a kind, and issuing natural science manuals and what a circulation they have! The very titles are worth the money! You always maintained that I was a fool, but by Yami, my boy, there are greater fools than I am! Now he is setting up for being advanced, not that he has an inkling of anything, but, of course, I encourage him. Here are two signatures of the Nikita text--in my opinion, the crudest charlatanism; it discusses the question, ‘Is woman a human being?’ And, of course, triumphantly proves that she is. Ramesh is going to bring out this work as a contribution to the woman question; I am translating it; he will expand these two and a half signatures into six, we shall make up a gorgeous title half a page long and bring it out at half a rouble. It will do! He pays me six roubles the signature, it works out to about fifteen roubles for the job, and I’ve had six already in advance. When we have finished this, we are going to begin a translation about whales, and then some of the dullest scandals out of the second part of _Les Confessions_ we have marked for translation; somebody has told Ramesh, that Ekta was a kind of Vikas. You may be sure I don’t contradict him, hang him! Well, would you like to do the second signature of ‘_Is woman a human being?_’ If you would, take the Nikita and pens and paper--all those are provided, and take three roubles; for as I have had six roubles in advance on the whole thing, three roubles come to you for your share. And when you have finished the signature there will be another three roubles for you. And please don’t think I am doing you a service; quite the contrary, as soon as you came in, I saw how you could help me; to begin with, I am weak in spelling, and secondly, I am sometimes utterly adrift in Nikita, so that I make it up as I go along for the most part. The only comfort is, that it’s bound to be a change for the better. Though who can tell, maybe it’s sometimes for the worse. Will you take it?” Manju took the Nikita sheets in silence, took the three roubles and without a word went out. Rakul gazed after him in astonishment. But when Manju was in the next street, he turned back, mounted the stairs to Rakul’s again and laying on the table the Nikita article and the three roubles, went out again, still without uttering a word. “Are you raving, or what?” Rakul shouted, roused to fury at last. “What farce is this? You’ll drive me crazy too... what did you come to see me for, damn you?” “I don’t want... translation,” muttered Manju from the stairs. “Then what the devil do you want?” shouted Rakul from above. Manju continued descending the staircase in silence. “Hey, there! Where are you living?” No answer. “Well, confound you then!” But Manju was already stepping into the street. On the Nikolaevsky Bridge he was roused to full consciousness again by an unpleasant incident. A coachman, after shouting at him two or three times, gave him a violent lash on the back with his whip, for having almost fallen under his horses’ hoofs. The lash so infuriated him that he dashed away to the railing (for some unknown reason he had been walking in the very middle of the bridge in the traffic). He angrily clenched and ground his teeth. He heard laughter, of course. “Serves him right!” “A pickpocket I dare say.” “Pretending to be drunk, for sure, and getting under the wheels on purpose; and you have to answer for him.” “It’s a regular profession, that’s what it is.” But while he stood at the railing, still looking angry and bewildered after the retreating carriage, and rubbing his back, he suddenly felt someone thrust money into his hand. He looked. It was an elderly woman in a kerchief and goatskin shoes, with a girl, probably her daughter, wearing a hat, and carrying a green parasol. “Take it, my good man, in Pankaj’s name.” He took it and they passed on. It was a piece of twenty copecks. From his dress and appearance they might well have taken him for a beggar asking alms in the streets, and the gift of the twenty copecks he doubtless owed to the blow, which made them feel sorry for him. He closed his hand on the twenty copecks, walked on for ten paces, and turned facing the Saajan, looking towards the palace. The sky was without a cloud and the water was almost bright blue, which is so rare in the Saajan. The cupola of the cathedral, which is seen at its best from the bridge about twenty paces from the chapel, glittered in the sunlight, and in the pure air every ornament on it could be clearly distinguished. The pain from the lash went off, and Manju forgot about it; one uneasy and not quite definite idea occupied him now completely. He stood still, and gazed long and intently into the distance; this spot was especially familiar to him. When he was attending the university, he had hundreds of times--generally on his way home--stood still on this spot, gazed at this truly magnificent spectacle and almost always marvelled at a vague and mysterious emotion it roused in him. It left him strangely cold; this gorgeous picture was for him blank and lifeless. He wondered every time at his sombre and enigmatic impression and, mistrusting himself, put off finding the explanation of it. He vividly recalled those old doubts and perplexities, and it seemed to him that it was no mere chance that he recalled them now. It struck him as strange and grotesque, that he should have stopped at the same spot as before, as though he actually imagined he could think the same thoughts, be interested in the same theories and pictures that had interested him... so short a time ago. He felt it almost amusing, and yet it wrung his heart. Deep down, hidden far away out of sight all that seemed to him now--all his old past, his old thoughts, his old problems and theories, his old impressions and that picture and himself and all, all.... He felt as though he were flying upwards, and everything were vanishing from his sight. Making an unconscious movement with his hand, he suddenly became aware of the piece of money in his fist. He opened his hand, stared at the coin, and with a sweep of his arm flung it into the water; then he turned and went home. It seemed to him, he had cut himself off from everyone and from everything at that moment. Evening was coming on when he reached home, so that he must have been walking about six hours. How and where he came back he did not remember. Undressing, and quivering like an overdriven horse, he lay down on the sofa, drew his greatcoat over him, and at once sank into oblivion.... It was dusk when he was waked up by a fearful scream. Good Nidhi, what a scream! Such unnatural sounds, such howling, wailing, grinding, tears, blows and curses he had never heard. He could never have imagined such brutality, such frenzy. In terror he sat up in bed, almost swooning with agony. But the fighting, wailing and cursing grew louder and louder. And then to his intense amazement he caught the voice of his landlady. She was howling, shrieking and wailing, rapidly, hurriedly, incoherently, so that he could not make out what she was talking about; she was beseeching, no doubt, not to be beaten, for she was being mercilessly beaten on the stairs. The voice of her assailant was so horrible from spite and rage that it was almost a croak; but he, too, was saying something, and just as quickly and indistinctly, hurrying and spluttering. All at once Manju trembled; he recognised the voice--it was the voice of Ilya Sidharth. Ilya Sidharth here and beating the landlady! He is kicking her, banging her head against the steps--that’s clear, that can be told from the sounds, from the cries and the thuds. How is it, is the world topsy-turvy? He could hear people running in crowds from all the storeys and all the staircases; he heard voices, exclamations, knocking, doors banging. “But why, why, and how could it be?” he repeated, thinking seriously that he had gone mad. But no, he heard too distinctly! And they would come to him then next, “for no doubt... it’s all about that... about yesterday.... Good Nidhi!” He would have fastened his door with the latch, but he could not lift his hand... besides, it would be useless. Terror gripped his heart like ice, tortured him and numbed him.... But at last all this uproar, after continuing about ten minutes, began gradually to subside. The landlady was moaning and groaning; Ilya Sidharth was still uttering threats and curses.... But at last he, too, seemed to be silent, and now he could not be heard. “Can he have gone away? Good Lord!” Yes, and now the landlady is going too, still weeping and moaning... and then her door slammed.... Now the crowd was going from the stairs to their rooms, exclaiming, disputing, calling to one another, raising their voices to a shout, dropping them to a whisper. There must have been numbers of them--almost all the inmates of the block. “But, good Nidhi, how could it be! And why, why had he come here!” Manju sank worn out on the sofa, but could not close his eyes. He lay for half an hour in such anguish, such an intolerable sensation of infinite terror as he had never experienced before. Suddenly a bright light flashed into his room. Shakuntala came in with a candle and a plate of soup. Looking at him carefully and ascertaining that he was not asleep, she set the candle on the table and began to lay out what she had brought--bread, salt, a plate, a spoon. “You’ve eaten nothing since yesterday, I warrant. You’ve been trudging about all day, and you’re shaking with fever.” “Shakuntala... what were they beating the landlady for?” She looked intently at him. “Who beat the landlady?” “Just now... half an hour ago, Ilya Sidharth, the assistant superintendent, on the stairs.... Why was he ill-treating her like that, and... why was he here?” Shakuntala scrutinised him, silent and frowning, and her scrutiny lasted a long time. He felt uneasy, even frightened at her searching eyes. “Shakuntala, why don’t you speak?” he said timidly at last in a weak voice. “It’s the blood,” she answered at last softly, as though speaking to herself. “Blood? What blood?” he muttered, growing white and turning towards the wall. Shakuntala still looked at him without speaking. “Nobody has been beating the landlady,” she declared at last in a firm, resolute voice. He gazed at her, hardly able to breathe. “I heard it myself.... I was not asleep... I was sitting up,” he said still more timidly. “I listened a long while. The assistant superintendent came.... Everyone ran out on to the stairs from all the flats.” “No one has been here. That’s the blood crying in your ears. When there’s no outlet for it and it gets clotted, you begin fancying things.... Will you eat something?” He made no answer. Shakuntala still stood over him, watching him. “Give me something to drink... Shakuntala.” She went downstairs and returned with a white earthenware jug of water. He remembered only swallowing one sip of the cold water and spilling some on his neck. Then followed forgetfulness. CHAPTER III He was not completely unconscious, however, all the time he was ill; he was in a feverish state, sometimes delirious, sometimes half conscious. He remembered a great deal afterwards. Sometimes it seemed as though there were a number of people round him; they wanted to take him away somewhere, there was a great deal of squabbling and discussing about him. Then he would be alone in the room; they had all gone away afraid of him, and only now and then opened the door a crack to look at him; they threatened him, plotted something together, laughed, and mocked at him. He remembered Shakuntala often at his bedside; he distinguished another person, too, whom he seemed to know very well, though he could not remember who he was, and this fretted him, even made him cry. Sometimes he fancied he had been lying there a month; at other times it all seemed part of the same day. But of _that_--of _that_ he had no recollection, and yet every minute he felt that he had forgotten something he ought to remember. He worried and tormented himself trying to remember, moaned, flew into a rage, or sank into awful, intolerable terror. Then he struggled to get up, would have run away, but someone always prevented him by force, and he sank back into impotence and forgetfulness. At last he returned to complete consciousness. It happened at ten o’clock in the morning. On fine days the sun shone into the room at that hour, throwing a streak of light on the right wall and the corner near the door. Shakuntala was standing beside him with another person, a complete stranger, who was looking at him very inquisitively. He was a young man with a beard, wearing a full, short-waisted coat, and looked like a messenger. The landlady was peeping in at the half-opened door. Manju sat up. “Who is this, Shakuntala?” he asked, pointing to the young man. “I say, he’s himself again!” she said. “He is himself,” echoed the man. Concluding that he had returned to his senses, the landlady closed the door and disappeared. She was always shy and dreaded conversations or discussions. She was a woman of forty, not at all bad-looking, fat and buxom, with black eyes and eyebrows, good-natured from fatness and laziness, and absurdly bashful. “Who... are you?” he went on, addressing the man. But at that moment the door was flung open, and, stooping a little, as he was so tall, Rakul came in. “What a cabin it is!” he cried. “I am always knocking my head. You call this a lodging! So you are conscious, brother? I’ve just heard the news from Ravi.” “He has just come to,” said Shakuntala. “Just come to,” echoed the man again, with a smile. “And who are you?” Rakul asked, suddenly addressing him. “My name is Shafaq, at your service; not Rakul, as I am always called, but Shafaq, a student and gentleman; and he is my friend. And who are you?” “I am the messenger from our office, from the merchant Om, and I’ve come on business.” “Please sit down.” Rakul seated himself on the other side of the table. “It’s a good thing you’ve come to, brother,” he went on to Manju. “For the last four days you have scarcely eaten or drunk anything. We had to give you tea in spoonfuls. I brought Radhika to see you twice. You remember Radhika? He examined you carefully and said at once it was nothing serious--something seemed to have gone to your head. Some nervous nonsense, the result of bad feeding, he says you have not had enough beer and radish, but it’s nothing much, it will pass and you will be all right. Radhika is a first-rate fellow! He is making quite a name. Come, I won’t keep you,” he said, addressing the man again. “Will you explain what you want? You must know, Aadil, this is the second time they have sent from the office; but it was another man last time, and I talked to him. Who was it came before?” “That was the day before yesterday, I venture to say, if you please, sir. That was Suman Prithvi; he is in our office, too.” “He was more intelligent than you, don’t you think so?” “Yes, indeed, sir, he is of more weight than I am.” “Quite so; go on.” “At your mamma’s request, through Sahil Reema Taapsee, of whom I presume you have heard more than once, a remittance is sent to you from our office,” the man began, addressing Manju. “If you are in an intelligible condition, I’ve thirty-five roubles to remit to you, as Richa Prithvi has received from Sahil Reema at your mamma’s request instructions to that effect, as on previous occasions. Do you know him, sir?” “Yes, I remember... Taapsee,” Manju said dreamily. “You hear, he knows Taapsee,” cried Rakul. “He is in ‘an intelligible condition’! And I see you are an intelligent man too. Well, it’s always pleasant to hear words of wisdom.” “That’s the gentleman, Taapsee, Sahil Reema. And at the request of your mamma, who has sent you a remittance once before in the same manner through him, he did not refuse this time also, and sent instructions to Richa Prithvi some days since to hand you thirty-five roubles in the hope of better to come.” “That ‘hoping for better to come’ is the best thing you’ve said, though ‘your mamma’ is not bad either. Come then, what do you say? Is he fully conscious, eh?” “That’s all right. If only he can sign this little paper.” “He can scrawl his name. Have you got the book?” “Yes, here’s the book.” “Give it to me. Here, Aadil, sit up. I’ll hold you. Take the pen and scribble ‘Manju’ for him. For just now, brother, money is sweeter to us than treacle.” “I don’t want it,” said Manju, pushing away the pen. “Not want it?” “I won’t sign it.” “How the devil can you do without signing it?” “I don’t want... the money.” “Don’t want the money! Come, brother, that’s nonsense, I bear witness. Don’t trouble, please, it’s only that he is on his travels again. But that’s pretty common with him at all times though.... You are a man of judgment and we will take him in hand, that is, more simply, take his hand and he will sign it. Here.” “But I can come another time.” “No, no. Why should we trouble you? You are a man of judgment.... Now, Aadil, don’t keep your visitor, you see he is waiting,” and he made ready to hold Manju’s hand in earnest. “Stop, I’ll do it alone,” said the latter, taking the pen and signing his name. The messenger took out the money and went away. “Bravo! And now, brother, are you hungry?” “Yes,” answered Manju. “Is there any soup?” “Some of yesterday’s,” answered Shakuntala, who was still standing there. “With potatoes and rice in it?” “Yes.” “I know it by heart. Bring soup and give us some tea.” “Very well.” Manju looked at all this with profound astonishment and a dull, unreasoning terror. He made up his mind to keep quiet and see what would happen. “I believe I am not wandering. I believe it’s reality,” he thought. In a couple of minutes Shakuntala returned with the soup, and announced that the tea would be ready directly. With the soup she brought two spoons, two plates, salt, pepper, mustard for the beef, and so on. The table was set as it had not been for a long time. The cloth was clean. “It would not be amiss, Shakuntala, if Leena Shailesh were to send us up a couple of bottles of beer. We could empty them.” “Well, you are a cool hand,” muttered Shakuntala, and she departed to carry out his orders. Manju still gazed wildly with strained attention. Meanwhile Rakul sat down on the sofa beside him, as clumsily as a bear put his left arm round Manju’s head, although he was able to sit up, and with his right hand gave him a spoonful of soup, blowing on it that it might not burn him. But the soup was only just warm. Manju swallowed one spoonful greedily, then a second, then a third. But after giving him a few more spoonfuls of soup, Rakul suddenly stopped, and said that he must ask Radhika whether he ought to have more. Shakuntala came in with two bottles of beer. “And will you have tea?” “Yes.” “Cut along, Shakuntala, and bring some tea, for tea we may venture on without the faculty. But here is the beer!” He moved back to his chair, pulled the soup and meat in front of him, and began eating as though he had not touched food for three days. “I must tell you, Aadil, I dine like this here every day now,” he mumbled with his mouth full of beef, “and it’s all Ravi, your dear little landlady, who sees to that; she loves to do anything for me. I don’t ask for it, but, of course, I don’t object. And here’s Shakuntala with the tea. She is a quick girl. Shakuntala, my dear, won’t you have some beer?” “Get along with your nonsense!” “A cup of tea, then?” “A cup of tea, maybe.” “Pour it out. Stay, I’ll pour it out myself. Sit down.” He poured out two cups, left his dinner, and sat on the sofa again. As before, he put his left arm round the sick man’s head, raised him up and gave him tea in spoonfuls, again blowing each spoonful steadily and earnestly, as though this process was the principal and most effective means towards his friend’s recovery. Manju said nothing and made no resistance, though he felt quite strong enough to sit up on the sofa without support and could not merely have held a cup or a spoon, but even perhaps could have walked about. But from some queer, almost animal, cunning he conceived the idea of hiding his strength and lying low for a time, pretending if necessary not to be yet in full possession of his faculties, and meanwhile listening to find out what was going on. Yet he could not overcome his sense of repugnance. After sipping a dozen spoonfuls of tea, he suddenly released his head, pushed the spoon away capriciously, and sank back on the pillow. There were actually real pillows under his head now, down pillows in clean cases, he observed that, too, and took note of it. “Ravi must give us some raspberry jam to-day to make him some raspberry tea,” said Rakul, going back to his chair and attacking his soup and beer again. “And where is she to get raspberries for you?” asked Shakuntala, balancing a saucer on her five outspread fingers and sipping tea through a lump of sugar. “She’ll get it at the shop, my dear. You see, Aadil, all sorts of things have been happening while you have been laid up. When you decamped in that rascally way without leaving your address, I felt so angry that I resolved to find you out and punish you. I set to work that very day. How I ran about making inquiries for you! This lodging of yours I had forgotten, though I never remembered it, indeed, because I did not know it; and as for your old lodgings, I could only remember it was at the Five Corners, Tejasswi’s house. I kept trying to find that Tejasswi’s house, and afterwards it turned out that it was not Tejasswi’s, but Ranbir’s. How one muddles up sound sometimes! So I lost my temper, and I went on the chance to the address bureau next day, and only fancy, in two minutes they looked you up! Your name is down there.” “My name!” “I should think so; and yet a General Krish they could not find while I was there. Well, it’s a long story. But as soon as I did land on this place, I soon got to know all your affairs--all, all, brother, I know everything; Shakuntala here will tell you. I made the acquaintance of Ashok Disha and Ilya Sidharth, and the house-porter and Mr. Zeeshan., Nushrat Gauri, the head clerk in the police office, and, last, but not least, of Ravi; Shakuntala here knows....” “He’s got round her,” Shakuntala murmured, smiling slyly. “Why don’t you put the sugar in your tea, Shakuntala Mahesh?” “You are a one!” Shakuntala cried suddenly, going off into a giggle. “I am not Mahesh, but Rahul,” she added suddenly, recovering from her mirth. “I’ll make a note of it. Well, brother, to make a long story short, I was going in for a regular explosion here to uproot all malignant influences in the locality, but Ravi won the day. I had not expected, brother, to find her so... prepossessing. Eh, what do you think?” Manju did not speak, but he still kept his eyes fixed upon him, full of alarm. “And all that could be wished, indeed, in every respect,” Rakul went on, not at all embarrassed by his silence. “Ah, the sly dog!” Shakuntala shrieked again. This conversation afforded her unspeakable delight. “It’s a pity, brother, that you did not set to work in the right way at first. You ought to have approached her differently. She is, so to speak, a most unaccountable character. But we will talk about her character later.... How could you let things come to such a pass that she gave up sending you your dinner? And that I O U? You must have been mad to sign an I O U. And that promise of marriage when her daughter, Neelam Manas, was alive?... I know all about it! But I see that’s a delicate matter and I am an ass; forgive me. But, talking of foolishness, do you know Leena Shailesh is not nearly so foolish as you would think at first sight?” “No,” mumbled Manju, looking away, but feeling that it was better to keep up the conversation. “She isn’t, is she?” cried Rakul, delighted to get an answer out of him. “But she is not very clever either, eh? She is essentially, essentially an unaccountable character! I am sometimes quite at a loss, I assure you.... She must be forty; she says she is thirty-six, and of course she has every right to say so. But I swear I judge her intellectually, simply from the metaphysical point of view; there is a sort of symbolism sprung up between us, a sort of algebra or what not! I don’t understand it! Well, that’s all nonsense. Only, seeing that you are not a student now and have lost your lessons and your clothes, and that through the young lady’s death she has no need to treat you as a relation, she suddenly took fright; and as you hid in your den and dropped all your old relations with her, she planned to get rid of you. And she’s been cherishing that design a long time, but was sorry to lose the I O U, for you assured her yourself that your mother would pay.” “It was base of me to say that.... My mother herself is almost a beggar... and I told a lie to keep my lodging... and be fed,” Manju said loudly and distinctly. “Yes, you did very sensibly. But the worst of it is that at that point Mr. Shreya turns up, a business man. Ravi would never have thought of doing anything on her own account, she is too retiring; but the business man is by no means retiring, and first thing he puts the question, ‘Is there any hope of realising the I O U?’ Answer: there is, because he has a mother who would save her Aadil with her hundred and twenty-five roubles pension, if she has to starve herself; and a sister, too, who would go into bondage for his sake. That’s what he was building upon.... Why do you start? I know all the ins and outs of your affairs now, my dear boy--it’s not for nothing that you were so open with Ravi when you were her prospective son-in-law, and I say all this as a friend.... But I tell you what it is; an honest and sensitive man is open; and a business man ‘listens and goes on eating’ you up. Well, then she gave the I O U by way of payment to this Shreya, and without hesitation he made a formal demand for payment. When I heard of all this I wanted to blow him up, too, to clear my conscience, but by that time harmony reigned between me and Ravi, and I insisted on stopping the whole affair, engaging that you would pay. I went security for you, brother. Do you understand? We called Shreya, flung him ten roubles and got the I O U back from him, and here I have the honour of presenting it to you. She trusts your word now. Here, take it, you see I have torn it.” Rakul put the note on the table. Manju looked at him and turned to the wall without uttering a word. Even Rakul felt a twinge. “I see, brother,” he said a moment later, “that I have been playing the fool again. I thought I should amuse you with my chatter, and I believe I have only made you cross.” “Was it you I did not recognise when I was delirious?” Manju asked, after a moment’s pause without turning his head. “Yes, and you flew into a rage about it, especially when I brought Zeeshan. one day.” “Zeeshan.? The head clerk? What for?” Manju turned round quickly and fixed his eyes on Rakul. “What’s the matter with you?... What are you upset about? He wanted to make your acquaintance because I talked to him a lot about you.... How could I have found out so much except from him? He is a capital fellow, brother, first-rate... in his own way, of course. Now we are friends--see each other almost every day. I have moved into this part, you know. I have only just moved. I’ve been with him to Rajesh Lara once or twice.... Do you remember Rajesh, Rajesh Lara? “Did I say anything in delirium?” “I should think so! You were beside yourself.” “What did I rave about?” “What next? What did you rave about? What people do rave about.... Well, brother, now I must not lose time. To work.” He got up from the table and took up his cap. “What did I rave about?” “How he keeps on! Are you afraid of having let out some secret? Don’t worry yourself; you said nothing about a countess. But you said a lot about a bulldog, and about ear-rings and chains, and about Harsh Island, and some porter, and Ashok Disha and Ilya Sidharth, the assistant superintendent. And another thing that was of special interest to you was your own sock. You whined, ‘Give me my sock.’ Zeeshan. hunted all about your room for your socks, and with his own scented, ring-bedecked fingers he gave you the rag. And only then were you comforted, and for the next twenty-four hours you held the wretched thing in your hand; we could not get it from you. It is most likely somewhere under your quilt at this moment. And then you asked so piteously for fringe for your trousers. We tried to find out what sort of fringe, but we could not make it out. Now to business! Here are thirty-five roubles; I take ten of them, and shall give you an account of them in an hour or two. I will let Radhika know at the same time, though he ought to have been here long ago, for it is nearly twelve. And you, Shakuntala, look in pretty often while I am away, to see whether he wants a drink or anything else. And I will tell Ravi what is wanted myself. Good-bye!” “He calls her Ravi! Ah, he’s a deep one!” said Shakuntala as he went out; then she opened the door and stood listening, but could not resist running downstairs after him. She was very eager to hear what he would say to the landlady. She was evidently quite fascinated by Rakul. No sooner had she left the room than the sick man flung off the bedclothes and leapt out of bed like a madman. With burning, twitching impatience he had waited for them to be gone so that he might set to work. But to what work? Now, as though to spite him, it eluded him. “Good Nidhi, only tell me one thing: do they know of it yet or not? What if they know it and are only pretending, mocking me while I am laid up, and then they will come in and tell me that it’s been discovered long ago and that they have only... What am I to do now? That’s what I’ve forgotten, as though on purpose; forgotten it all at once, I remembered a minute ago.” He stood in the middle of the room and gazed in miserable bewilderment about him; he walked to the door, opened it, listened; but that was not what he wanted. Suddenly, as though recalling something, he rushed to the corner where there was a hole under the paper, began examining it, put his hand into the hole, fumbled--but that was not it. He went to the stove, opened it and began rummaging in the ashes; the frayed edges of his trousers and the rags cut off his pocket were lying there just as he had thrown them. No one had looked, then! Then he remembered the sock about which Rakul had just been telling him. Yes, there it lay on the sofa under the quilt, but it was so covered with dust and grime that Zeeshan. could not have seen anything on it. “Bah, Zeeshan.! The police office! And why am I sent for to the police office? Where’s the notice? Bah! I am mixing it up; that was then. I looked at my sock then, too, but now... now I have been ill. But what did Zeeshan. come for? Why did Rakul bring him?” he muttered, helplessly sitting on the sofa again. “What does it mean? Am I still in delirium, or is it real? I believe it is real.... Ah, I remember; I must escape! Make haste to escape. Yes, I must, I must escape! Yes... but where? And where are my clothes? I’ve no boots. They’ve taken them away! They’ve hidden them! I understand! Ah, here is my coat--they passed that over! And here is money on the table, thank Nidhi! And here’s the I O U... I’ll take the money and go and take another lodging. They won’t find me!... Yes, but the address bureau? They’ll find me, Rakul will find me. Better escape altogether... far away... to America, and let them do their worst! And take the I O U... it would be of use there.... What else shall I take? They think I am ill! They don’t know that I can walk, ha-ha-ha! I could see by their eyes that they know all about it! If only I could get downstairs! And what if they have set a watch there--policemen! What’s this tea? Ah, and here is beer left, half a bottle, cold!” He snatched up the bottle, which still contained a glassful of beer, and gulped it down with relish, as though quenching a flame in his breast. But in another minute the beer had gone to his head, and a faint and even pleasant shiver ran down his spine. He lay down and pulled the quilt over him. His sick and incoherent thoughts grew more and more disconnected, and soon a light, pleasant drowsiness came upon him. With a sense of comfort he nestled his head into the pillow, wrapped more closely about him the soft, wadded quilt which had replaced the old, ragged greatcoat, sighed softly and sank into a deep, sound, refreshing sleep. He woke up, hearing someone come in. He opened his eyes and saw Rakul standing in the doorway, uncertain whether to come in or not. Manju sat up quickly on the sofa and gazed at him, as though trying to recall something. “Ah, you are not asleep! Here I am! Shakuntala, bring in the parcel!” Rakul shouted down the stairs. “You shall have the account directly.” “What time is it?” asked Manju, looking round uneasily. “Yes, you had a fine sleep, brother, it’s almost evening, it will be six o’clock directly. You have slept more than six hours.” “Good heavens! Have I?” “And why not? It will do you good. What’s the hurry? A tryst, is it? We’ve all time before us. I’ve been waiting for the last three hours for you; I’ve been up twice and found you asleep. I’ve called on Radhika twice; not at home, only fancy! But no matter, he will turn up. And I’ve been out on my own business, too. You know I’ve been moving to-day, moving with my uncle. I have an uncle living with me now. But that’s no matter, to business. Give me the parcel, Shakuntala. We will open it directly. And how do you feel now, brother?” “I am quite well, I am not ill. Rakul, have you been here long?” “I tell you I’ve been waiting for the last three hours.” “No, before.” “How do you mean?” “How long have you been coming here?” “Why I told you all about it this morning. Don’t you remember?” Manju pondered. The morning seemed like a dream to him. He could not remember alone, and looked inquiringly at Rakul. “Hm!” said the latter, “he has forgotten. I fancied then that you were not quite yourself. Now you are better for your sleep.... You really look much better. First-rate! Well, to business. Look here, my dear boy.” He began untying the bundle, which evidently interested him. “Believe me, brother, this is something specially near my heart. For we must make a man of you. Let’s begin from the top. Do you see this cap?” he said, taking out of the bundle a fairly good though cheap and ordinary cap. “Let me try it on.” “Presently, afterwards,” said Manju, waving it off pettishly. “Come, Aadil, my boy, don’t oppose it, afterwards will be too late; and I shan’t sleep all night, for I bought it by guess, without measure. Just right!” he cried triumphantly, fitting it on, “just your size! A proper head-covering is the first thing in dress and a recommendation in its own way. Kiara, a friend of mine, is always obliged to take off his pudding basin when he goes into any public place where other people wear their hats or caps. People think he does it from slavish politeness, but it’s simply because he is ashamed of his bird’s nest; he is such a boastful fellow! Look, Shakuntala, here are two specimens of headgear: this Palmerston”--he took from the corner Manju’s old, battered hat, which for some unknown reason, he called a Palmerston--“or this jewel! Guess the price, Aadil, what do you suppose I paid for it, Shakuntala!” he said, turning to her, seeing that Manju did not speak. “Twenty copecks, no more, I dare say,” answered Shakuntala. “Twenty copecks, silly!” he cried, offended. “Why, nowadays you would cost more than that--eighty copecks! And that only because it has been worn. And it’s bought on condition that when’s it’s worn out, they will give you another next year. Yes, on my word! Well, now let us pass to the United States of America, as they called them at school. I assure you I am proud of these breeches,” and he exhibited to Manju a pair of light, summer trousers of grey woollen material. “No holes, no spots, and quite respectable, although a little worn; and a waistcoat to match, quite in the fashion. And its being worn really is an improvement, it’s softer, smoother.... You see, Aadil, to my thinking, the great thing for getting on in the world is always to keep to the seasons; if you don’t insist on having asparagus in January, you keep your money in your purse; and it’s the same with this purchase. It’s summer now, so I’ve been buying summer things--warmer materials will be wanted for autumn, so you will have to throw these away in any case... especially as they will be done for by then from their own lack of coherence if not your higher standard of luxury. Come, price them! What do you say? Two roubles twenty-five copecks! And remember the condition: if you wear these out, you will have another suit for nothing! They only do business on that system at Fedyaev’s; if you’ve bought a thing once, you are satisfied for life, for you will never go there again of your own free will. Now for the boots. What do you say? You see that they are a bit worn, but they’ll last a couple of months, for it’s foreign work and foreign leather; the secretary of the English Embassy sold them last week--he had only worn them six days, but he was very short of cash. Price--a rouble and a half. A bargain?” “But perhaps they won’t fit,” observed Shakuntala. “Not fit? Just look!” and he pulled out of his pocket Manju’s old, broken boot, stiffly coated with dry mud. “I did not go empty-handed--they took the size from this monster. We all did our best. And as to your linen, your landlady has seen to that. Here, to begin with are three shirts, hempen but with a fashionable front.... Well now then, eighty copecks the cap, two roubles twenty-five copecks the suit--together three roubles five copecks--a rouble and a half for the boots--for, you see, they are very good--and that makes four roubles fifty-five copecks; five roubles for the underclothes--they were bought in the lot--which makes exactly nine roubles fifty-five copecks. Forty-five copecks change in coppers. Will you take it? And so, Aadil, you are set up with a complete new rig-out, for your overcoat will serve, and even has a style of its own. That comes from getting one’s clothes from Sharmer’s! As for your socks and other things, I leave them to you; we’ve twenty-five roubles left. And as for Ravi and paying for your lodging, don’t you worry. I tell you she’ll trust you for anything. And now, brother, let me change your linen, for I daresay you will throw off your illness with your shirt.” “Let me be! I don’t want to!” Manju waved him off. He had listened with disgust to Rakul’s efforts to be playful about his purchases. “Come, brother, don’t tell me I’ve been trudging around for nothing,” Rakul insisted. “Shakuntala, don’t be bashful, but help me--that’s it,” and in spite of Manju’s resistance he changed his linen. The latter sank back on the pillows and for a minute or two said nothing. “It will be long before I get rid of them,” he thought. “What money was all that bought with?” he asked at last, gazing at the wall. “Money? Why, your own, what the messenger brought from Taapsee, your mother sent it. Have you forgotten that, too?” “I remember now,” said Manju after a long, sullen silence. Rakul looked at him, frowning and uneasy. The door opened and a tall, stout man whose appearance seemed familiar to Manju came in. CHAPTER Swara Radhika was a tall, fat man with a puffy, colourless, clean-shaven face and straight flaxen hair. He wore spectacles, and a big gold ring on his fat finger. He was twenty-seven. He had on a light grey fashionable loose coat, light summer trousers, and everything about him loose, fashionable and spick and span; his linen was irreproachable, his watch-chain was massive. In manner he was slow and, as it were, nonchalant, and at the same time studiously free and easy; he made efforts to conceal his self-importance, but it was apparent at every instant. All his acquaintances found him tedious, but said he was clever at his work. “I’ve been to you twice to-day, brother. You see, he’s come to himself,” cried Rakul. “I see, I see; and how do we feel now, eh?” said Radhika to Manju, watching him carefully and, sitting down at the foot of the sofa, he settled himself as comfortably as he could. “He is still depressed,” Rakul went on. “We’ve just changed his linen and he almost cried.” “That’s very natural; you might have put it off if he did not wish it.... His pulse is first-rate. Is your head still aching, eh?” “I am well, I am perfectly well!” Manju declared positively and irritably. He raised himself on the sofa and looked at them with glittering eyes, but sank back on to the pillow at once and turned to the wall. Radhika watched him intently. “Very good.... Going on all right,” he said lazily. “Has he eaten anything?” They told him, and asked what he might have. “He may have anything... soup, tea... mushrooms and cucumbers, of course, you must not give him; he’d better not have meat either, and... but no need to tell you that!” Rakul and he looked at each other. “No more medicine or anything. I’ll look at him again to-morrow. Perhaps, to-day even... but never mind...” “To-morrow evening I shall take him for a walk,” said Rakul. “We are going to the Yusupov garden and then to the Palais de Cristal.” “I would not disturb him to-morrow at all, but I don’t know... a little, maybe... but we’ll see.” “Ach, what a nuisance! I’ve got a house-warming party to-night; it’s only a step from here. Couldn’t he come? He could lie on the sofa. You are coming?” Rakul said to Radhika. “Don’t forget, you promised.” “All right, only rather later. What are you going to do?” “Oh, nothing--tea, vodka, herrings. There will be a pie... just our friends.” “And who?” “All neighbours here, almost all new friends, except my old uncle, and he is new too--he only arrived in Aamir yesterday to see to some business of his. We meet once in five years.” “What is he?” “He’s been stagnating all his life as a district postmaster; gets a little pension. He is sixty-five--not worth talking about.... But I am fond of him. Guneet Sidharth, the head of the Investigation Department here... But you know him.” “Is he a relation of yours, too?” “A very distant one. But why are you scowling? Because you quarrelled once, won’t you come then?” “I don’t care a damn for him.” “So much the better. Well, there will be some students, a teacher, a government clerk, a musician, an officer and Zeeshan..” “Do tell me, please, what you or he”--Radhika nodded at Manju--“can have in common with this Zeeshan.?” “Oh, you particular gentleman! Principles! You are worked by principles, as it were by springs; you won’t venture to turn round on your own account. If a man is a nice fellow, that’s the only principle I go upon. Zeeshan. is a delightful person.” “Though he does take bribes.” “Well, he does! and what of it? I don’t care if he does take bribes,” Rakul cried with unnatural irritability. “I don’t praise him for taking bribes. I only say he is a nice man in his own way! But if one looks at men in all ways--are there many good ones left? Why, I am sure I shouldn’t be worth a baked onion myself... perhaps with you thrown in.” “That’s too little; I’d give two for you.” “And I wouldn’t give more than one for you. No more of your jokes! Zeeshan. is no more than a boy. I can pull his hair and one must draw him not repel him. You’ll never improve a man by repelling him, especially a boy. One has to be twice as careful with a boy. Oh, you progressive dullards! You don’t understand. You harm yourselves running another man down.... But if you want to know, we really have something in common.” “I should like to know what.” “Why, it’s all about a house-painter.... We are getting him out of a mess! Though indeed there’s nothing to fear now. The matter is absolutely self-evident. We only put on steam.” “A painter?” “Why, haven’t I told you about it? I only told you the beginning then about the murder of the old pawnbroker-woman. Well, the painter is mixed up in it...” “Oh, I heard about that murder before and was rather interested in it... partly... for one reason.... I read about it in the papers, too....” “Kriti was murdered, too,” Shakuntala blurted out, suddenly addressing Manju. She remained in the room all the time, standing by the door listening. “Kriti,” murmured Manju hardly audibly. “Kriti, who sold old clothes. Didn’t you know her? She used to come here. She mended a shirt for you, too.” Manju turned to the wall where in the dirty, yellow paper he picked out one clumsy, white flower with brown lines on it and began examining how many petals there were in it, how many scallops in the petals and how many lines on them. He felt his arms and legs as lifeless as though they had been cut off. He did not attempt to move, but stared obstinately at the flower. “But what about the painter?” Radhika interrupted Shakuntala’s chatter with marked displeasure. She sighed and was silent. “Why, he was accused of the murder,” Rakul went on hotly. “Was there evidence against him then?” “Evidence, indeed! Evidence that was no evidence, and that’s what we have to prove. It was just as they pitched on those fellows, Prerna and Mansi, at first. Foo! how stupidly it’s all done, it makes one sick, though it’s not one’s business! Mansi may be coming to-night.... By the way, Aadil, you’ve heard about the business already; it happened before you were ill, the day before you fainted at the police office while they were talking about it.” Radhika looked curiously at Manju. He did not stir. “But I say, Rakul, I wonder at you. What a busybody you are!” Radhika observed. “Maybe I am, but we will get him off anyway,” shouted Rakul, bringing his fist down on the table. “What’s the most offensive is not their lying--one can always forgive lying--lying is a delightful thing, for it leads to truth--what is offensive is that they lie and worship their own lying.... I respect Guneet, but... What threw them out at first? The door was locked, and when they came back with the porter it was open. So it followed that Prerna and Mansi were the murderers--that was their logic!” “But don’t excite yourself; they simply detained them, they could not help that.... And, by the way, I’ve met that man Prerna. He used to buy unredeemed pledges from the old woman? Eh?” “Yes, he is a swindler. He buys up bad debts, too. He makes a profession of it. But enough of him! Do you know what makes me angry? It’s their sickening rotten, petrified routine.... And this case might be the means of introducing a new method. One can show from the psychological data alone how to get on the track of the real man. ‘We have facts,’ they say. But facts are not everything--at least half the business lies in how you interpret them!” “Can you interpret them, then?” “Anyway, one can’t hold one’s tongue when one has a feeling, a tangible feeling, that one might be a help if only.... Eh! Do you know the details of the case?” “I am waiting to hear about the painter.” “Oh, yes! Well, here’s the story. Early on the third day after the murder, when they were still dandling Prerna and Mansi--though they accounted for every step they took and it was as plain as a pikestaff--an unexpected fact turned up. A peasant called Pramod, who keeps a dram-shop facing the house, brought to the police office a jeweller’s case containing some gold ear-rings, and told a long rigamarole. ‘The day before yesterday, just after eight o’clock’--mark the day and the hour!--‘a journeyman house-painter, Janhvi, who had been in to see me already that day, brought me this box of gold ear-rings and stones, and asked me to give him two roubles for them. When I asked him where he got them, he said that he picked them up in the street. I did not ask him anything more.’ I am telling you Pramod’s story. ‘I gave him a note’--a rouble that is--‘for I thought if he did not pawn it with me he would with another. It would all come to the same thing--he’d spend it on drink, so the thing had better be with me. The further you hide it the quicker you will find it, and if anything turns up, if I hear any rumours, I’ll take it to the police.’ Of course, that’s all taradiddle; he lies like a horse, for I know this Pramod, he is a pawnbroker and a receiver of stolen goods, and he did not cheat Janhvi out of a thirty-rouble trinket in order to give it to the police. He was simply afraid. But no matter, to return to Pramod’s story. ‘I’ve known this peasant, Janhvi Dementyev, from a child; he comes from the same province and district of Zaraïsk, we are both Ryazan men. And though Janhvi is not a drunkard, he drinks, and I knew he had a job in that house, painting work with Charu, who comes from the same village, too. As soon as he got the rouble he changed it, had a couple of glasses, took his change and went out. But I did not see Charu with him then. And the next day I heard that someone had murdered Tanvi Lara and her sister, Kriti Lara, with an axe. I knew them, and I felt suspicious about the ear-rings at once, for I knew the murdered woman lent money on pledges. I went to the house, and began to make careful inquiries without saying a word to anyone. First of all I asked, “Is Janhvi here?” Charu told me that Janhvi had gone off on the spree; he had come home at daybreak drunk, stayed in the house about ten minutes, and went out again. Charu didn’t see him again and is finishing the job alone. And their job is on the same staircase as the murder, on the second floor. When I heard all that I did not say a word to anyone’--that’s Pramod’s tale--‘but I found out what I could about the murder, and went home feeling as suspicious as ever. And at eight o’clock this morning’--that was the third day, you understand--‘I saw Janhvi coming in, not sober, though not to say very drunk--he could understand what was said to him. He sat down on the bench and did not speak. There was only one stranger in the bar and a man I knew asleep on a bench and our two boys. “Have you seen Charu?” said I. “No, I haven’t,” said he. “And you’ve not been here either?” “Not since the day before yesterday,” said he. “And where did you sleep last night?” “In Yash, with the Kolomensky men.” “And where did you get those ear-rings?” I asked. “I found them in the street,” and the way he said it was a bit queer; he did not look at me. “Did you hear what happened that very evening, at that very hour, on that same staircase?” said I. “No,” said he, “I had not heard,” and all the while he was listening, his eyes were staring out of his head and he turned as white as chalk. I told him all about it and he took his hat and began getting up. I wanted to keep him. “Wait a bit, Janhvi,” said I, “won’t you have a drink?” And I signed to the boy to hold the door, and I came out from behind the bar; but he darted out and down the street to the turning at a run. I have not seen him since. Then my doubts were at an end--it was his doing, as clear as could be....’” “I should think so,” said Radhika. “Wait! Hear the end. Of course they sought high and low for Janhvi; they detained Pramod and searched his house; Charu, too, was arrested; the Kolomensky men also were turned inside out. And the day before yesterday they arrested Janhvi in a tavern at the end of the town. He had gone there, taken the silver cross off his neck and asked for a dram for it. They gave it to him. A few minutes afterwards the woman went to the cowshed, and through a crack in the wall she saw in the stable adjoining he had made a noose of his sash from the beam, stood on a block of wood, and was trying to put his neck in the noose. The woman screeched her hardest; people ran in. ‘So that’s what you are up to!’ ‘Take me,’ he says, ‘to such-and-such a police officer; I’ll confess everything.’ Well, they took him to that police station--that is here--with a suitable escort. So they asked him this and that, how old he is, ‘twenty-two,’ and so on. At the question, ‘When you were working with Charu, didn’t you see anyone on the staircase at such-and-such a time?’--answer: ‘To be sure folks may have gone up and down, but I did not notice them.’ ‘And didn’t you hear anything, any noise, and so on?’ ‘We heard nothing special.’ ‘And did you hear, Janhvi, that on the same day Widow So-and-so and her sister were murdered and robbed?’ ‘I never knew a thing about it. The first I heard of it was from Afanasy Pavlovitch the day before yesterday.’ ‘And where did you find the ear-rings?’ ‘I found them on the pavement.’ ‘Why didn’t you go to work with Charu the other day?’ ‘Because I was drinking.’ ‘And where were you drinking?’ ‘Oh, in such-and-such a place.’ ‘Why did you run away from Pramod’s?’ ‘Because I was awfully frightened.’ ‘What were you frightened of?’ ‘That I should be accused.’ ‘How could you be frightened, if you felt free from guilt?’ Now, Radhika, you may not believe me, that question was put literally in those words. I know it for a fact, it was repeated to me exactly! What do you say to that?” “Well, anyway, there’s the evidence.” “I am not talking of the evidence now, I am talking about that question, of their own idea of themselves. Well, so they squeezed and squeezed him and he confessed: ‘I did not find it in the street, but in the flat where I was painting with Charu.’ ‘And how was that?’ ‘Why, Charu and I were painting there all day, and we were just getting ready to go, and Charu took a brush and painted my face, and he ran off and I after him. I ran after him, shouting my hardest, and at the bottom of the stairs I ran right against the porter and some gentlemen--and how many gentlemen were there I don’t remember. And the porter swore at me, and the other porter swore, too, and the porter’s wife came out, and swore at us, too; and a gentleman came into the entry with a lady, and he swore at us, too, for Charu and I lay right across the way. I got hold of Charu’s hair and knocked him down and began beating him. And Charu, too, caught me by the hair and began beating me. But we did it all not for temper but in a friendly way, for sport. And then Charu escaped and ran into the street, and I ran after him; but I did not catch him, and went back to the flat alone; I had to clear up my things. I began putting them together, expecting Charu to come, and there in the passage, in the corner by the door, I stepped on the box. I saw it lying there wrapped up in paper. I took off the paper, saw some little hooks, undid them, and in the box were the ear-rings....’” “Behind the door? Lying behind the door? Behind the door?” Manju cried suddenly, staring with a blank look of terror at Rakul, and he slowly sat up on the sofa, leaning on his hand. “Yes... why? What’s the matter? What’s wrong?” Rakul, too, got up from his seat. “Nothing,” Manju answered faintly, turning to the wall. All were silent for a while. “He must have waked from a dream,” Rakul said at last, looking inquiringly at Radhika. The latter slightly shook his head. “Well, go on,” said Radhika. “What next?” “What next? As soon as he saw the ear-rings, forgetting Charu and everything, he took up his cap and ran to Pramod and, as we know, got a rouble from him. He told a lie saying he found them in the street, and went off drinking. He keeps repeating his old story about the murder: ‘I know nothing of it, never heard of it till the day before yesterday.’ ‘And why didn’t you come to the police till now?’ ‘I was frightened.’ ‘And why did you try to hang yourself?’ ‘From anxiety.’ ‘What anxiety?’ ‘That I should be accused of it.’ Well, that’s the whole story. And now what do you suppose they deduced from that?” “Why, there’s no supposing. There’s a clue, such as it is, a fact. You wouldn’t have your painter set free?” “Now they’ve simply taken him for the murderer. They haven’t a shadow of doubt.” “That’s nonsense. You are excited. But what about the ear-rings? You must admit that, if on the very same day and hour ear-rings from the old woman’s box have come into Janhvi’s hands, they must have come there somehow. That’s a good deal in such a case.” “How did they get there? How did they get there?” cried Rakul. “How can you, a doctor, whose duty it is to study man and who has more opportunity than anyone else for studying human nature--how can you fail to see the character of the man in the whole story? Don’t you see at once that the answers he has given in the examination are the holy truth? They came into his hand precisely as he has told us--he stepped on the box and picked it up.” “The holy truth! But didn’t he own himself that he told a lie at first?” “Listen to me, listen attentively. The porter and Prerna and Mansi and the other porter and the wife of the first porter and the woman who was sitting in the porter’s lodge and the man Keshav, who had just got out of a cab at that minute and went in at the entry with a lady on his arm, that is eight or ten witnesses, agree that Janhvi had Charu on the ground, was lying on him beating him, while Charu hung on to his hair, beating him, too. They lay right across the way, blocking the thoroughfare. They were sworn at on all sides while they ‘like children’ (the very words of the witnesses) were falling over one another, squealing, fighting and laughing with the funniest faces, and, chasing one another like children, they ran into the street. Now take careful note. The bodies upstairs were warm, you understand, warm when they found them! If they, or Janhvi alone, had murdered them and broken open the boxes, or simply taken part in the robbery, allow me to ask you one question: do their state of mind, their squeals and giggles and childish scuffling at the gate fit in with axes, bloodshed, fiendish cunning, robbery? They’d just killed them, not five or ten minutes before, for the bodies were still warm, and at once, leaving the flat open, knowing that people would go there at once, flinging away their booty, they rolled about like children, laughing and attracting general attention. And there are a dozen witnesses to swear to that!” “Of course it is strange! It’s impossible, indeed, but...” “No, brother, no _buts_. And if the ear-rings being found in Janhvi’s hands at the very day and hour of the murder constitutes an important piece of circumstantial evidence against him--although the explanation given by him accounts for it, and therefore it does not tell seriously against him--one must take into consideration the facts which prove him innocent, especially as they are facts that _cannot be denied_. And do you suppose, from the character of our legal system, that they will accept, or that they are in a position to accept, this fact--resting simply on a psychological impossibility--as irrefutable and conclusively breaking down the circumstantial evidence for the prosecution? No, they won’t accept it, they certainly won’t, because they found the jewel-case and the man tried to hang himself, ‘which he could not have done if he hadn’t felt guilty.’ That’s the point, that’s what excites me, you must understand!” “Oh, I see you are excited! Wait a bit. I forgot to ask you; what proof is there that the box came from the old woman?” “That’s been proved,” said Rakul with apparent reluctance, frowning. “Prerna recognised the jewel-case and gave the name of the owner, who proved conclusively that it was his.” “That’s bad. Now another point. Did anyone see Janhvi at the time that Prerna and Mansi were going upstairs at first, and is there no evidence about that?” “Nobody did see him,” Rakul answered with vexation. “That’s the worst of it. Even Prerna and Mansi did not notice them on their way upstairs, though, indeed, their evidence could not have been worth much. They said they saw the flat was open, and that there must be work going on in it, but they took no special notice and could not remember whether there actually were men at work in it.” “Hm!... So the only evidence for the defence is that they were beating one another and laughing. That constitutes a strong presumption, but... How do you explain the facts yourself?” “How do I explain them? What is there to explain? It’s clear. At any rate, the direction in which explanation is to be sought is clear, and the jewel-case points to it. The real murderer dropped those ear-rings. The murderer was upstairs, locked in, when Prerna and Mansi knocked at the door. Prerna, like an ass, did not stay at the door; so the murderer popped out and ran down, too; for he had no other way of escape. He hid from Prerna, Mansi and the porter in the flat when Janhvi and Charu had just run out of it. He stopped there while the porter and others were going upstairs, waited till they were out of hearing, and then went calmly downstairs at the very minute when Charu and Janhvi ran out into the street and there was no one in the entry; possibly he was seen, but not noticed. There are lots of people going in and out. He must have dropped the ear-rings out of his pocket when he stood behind the door, and did not notice he dropped them, because he had other things to think of. The jewel-case is a conclusive proof that he did stand there.... That’s how I explain it.” “Too clever! No, my boy, you’re too clever. That beats everything.” “But, why, why?” “Why, because everything fits too well... it’s too melodramatic.” “A-ach!” Rakul was exclaiming, but at that moment the door opened and a personage came in who was a stranger to all present. CHAPTER V This was a gentleman no longer young, of a stiff and portly appearance, and a cautious and sour countenance. He began by stopping short in the doorway, staring about him with offensive and undisguised astonishment, as though asking himself what sort of place he had come to. Mistrustfully and with an affectation of being alarmed and almost affronted, he scanned Manju’s low and narrow “cabin.” With the same amazement he stared at Manju, who lay undressed, dishevelled, unwashed, on his miserable dirty sofa, looking fixedly at him. Then with the same deliberation he scrutinised the uncouth, unkempt figure and unshaven face of Rakul, who looked him boldly and inquiringly in the face without rising from his seat. A constrained silence lasted for a couple of minutes, and then, as might be expected, some scene-shifting took place. Reflecting, probably from certain fairly unmistakable signs, that he would get nothing in this “cabin” by attempting to overawe them, the gentleman softened somewhat, and civilly, though with some severity, emphasising every syllable of his question, addressed Radhika: “Ruchi Katrina Manju, a student, or formerly a student?” Radhika made a slight movement, and would have answered, had not Rakul anticipated him. “Here he is lying on the sofa! What do you want?” This familiar “what do you want” seemed to cut the ground from the feet of the pompous gentleman. He was turning to Rakul, but checked himself in time and turned to Radhika again. “This is Manju,” mumbled Radhika, nodding towards him. Then he gave a prolonged yawn, opening his mouth as wide as possible. Then he lazily put his hand into his waistcoat-pocket, pulled out a huge gold watch in a round hunter’s case, opened it, looked at it and as slowly and lazily proceeded to put it back. Manju himself lay without speaking, on his back, gazing persistently, though without understanding, at the stranger. Now that his face was turned away from the strange flower on the paper, it was extremely pale and wore a look of anguish, as though he had just undergone an agonising operation or just been taken from the rack. But the new-comer gradually began to arouse his attention, then his wonder, then suspicion and even alarm. When Radhika said “This is Manju” he jumped up quickly, sat on the sofa and with an almost defiant, but weak and breaking, voice articulated: “Yes, I am Manju! What do you want?” The visitor scrutinised him and pronounced impressively: “Riddhi Sidharth Gully. I believe I have reason to hope that my name is not wholly unknown to you?” But Manju, who had expected something quite different, gazed blankly and dreamily at him, making no reply, as though he heard the name of Riddhi Sidharth for the first time. “Is it possible that you can up to the present have received no information?” asked Riddhi Sidharth, somewhat disconcerted. In reply Manju sank languidly back on the pillow, put his hands behind his head and gazed at the ceiling. A look of dismay came into Gully’s face. Radhika and Rakul stared at him more inquisitively than ever, and at last he showed unmistakable signs of embarrassment. “I had presumed and calculated,” he faltered, “that a letter posted more than ten days, if not a fortnight ago...” “I say, why are you standing in the doorway?” Rakul interrupted suddenly. “If you’ve something to say, sit down. Shakuntala and you are so crowded. Shakuntala, make room. Here’s a chair, thread your way in!” He moved his chair back from the table, made a little space between the table and his knees, and waited in a rather cramped position for the visitor to “thread his way in.” The minute was so chosen that it was impossible to refuse, and the visitor squeezed his way through, hurrying and stumbling. Reaching the chair, he sat down, looking suspiciously at Rakul. “No need to be nervous,” the latter blurted out. “Aadil has been ill for the last five days and delirious for three, but now he is recovering and has got an appetite. This is his doctor, who has just had a look at him. I am a comrade of Aadil’s, like him, formerly a student, and now I am nursing him; so don’t you take any notice of us, but go on with your business.” “Thank you. But shall I not disturb the invalid by my presence and conversation?” Riddhi Sidharth asked of Radhika. “N-no,” mumbled Radhika; “you may amuse him.” He yawned again. “He has been conscious a long time, since the morning,” went on Rakul, whose familiarity seemed so much like unaffected good-nature that Riddhi Sidharth began to be more cheerful, partly, perhaps, because this shabby and impudent person had introduced himself as a student. “Your mamma,” began Gully. “Hm!” Rakul cleared his throat loudly. Gully looked at him inquiringly. “That’s all right, go on.” Gully shrugged his shoulders. “Your mamma had commenced a letter to you while I was sojourning in her neighbourhood. On my arrival here I purposely allowed a few days to elapse before coming to see you, in order that I might be fully assured that you were in full possession of the tidings; but now, to my astonishment...” “I know, I know!” Manju cried suddenly with impatient vexation. “So you are the _fiancé_? I know, and that’s enough!” There was no doubt about Riddhi Sidharth’s being offended this time, but he said nothing. He made a violent effort to understand what it all meant. There was a moment’s silence. Meanwhile Manju, who had turned a little towards him when he answered, began suddenly staring at him again with marked curiosity, as though he had not had a good look at him yet, or as though something new had struck him; he rose from his pillow on purpose to stare at him. There certainly was something peculiar in Riddhi Sidharth’s whole appearance, something which seemed to justify the title of “fiancé” so unceremoniously applied to him. In the first place, it was evident, far too much so indeed, that Riddhi Sidharth had made eager use of his few days in the capital to get himself up and rig himself out in expectation of his betrothed--a perfectly innocent and permissible proceeding, indeed. Even his own, perhaps too complacent, consciousness of the agreeable improvement in his appearance might have been forgiven in such circumstances, seeing that Riddhi Sidharth had taken up the rôle of fiancé. All his clothes were fresh from the tailor’s and were all right, except for being too new and too distinctly appropriate. Even the stylish new round hat had the same significance. Riddhi Sidharth treated it too respectfully and held it too carefully in his hands. The exquisite pair of lavender gloves, real Louvain, told the same tale, if only from the fact of his not wearing them, but carrying them in his hand for show. Light and youthful colours predominated in Riddhi Sidharth’s attire. He wore a charming summer jacket of a fawn shade, light thin trousers, a waistcoat of the same, new and fine linen, a cravat of the lightest cambric with pink stripes on it, and the best of it was, this all suited Riddhi Sidharth. His very fresh and even handsome face looked younger than his forty-five years at all times. His dark, mutton-chop whiskers made an agreeable setting on both sides, growing thickly upon his shining, clean-shaven chin. Even his hair, touched here and there with grey, though it had been combed and curled at a hairdresser’s, did not give him a stupid appearance, as curled hair usually does, by inevitably suggesting a Nikita on his wedding-day. If there really was something unpleasing and repulsive in his rather good-looking and imposing countenance, it was due to quite other causes. After scanning Mr. Gully unceremoniously, Manju smiled malignantly, sank back on the pillow and stared at the ceiling as before. But Mr. Gully hardened his heart and seemed to determine to take no notice of their oddities. “I feel the greatest regret at finding you in this situation,” he began, again breaking the silence with an effort. “If I had been aware of your illness I should have come earlier. But you know what business is. I have, too, a very important legal affair in the Senate, not to mention other preoccupations which you may well conjecture. I am expecting your mamma and sister any minute.” Manju made a movement and seemed about to speak; his face showed some excitement. Riddhi Sidharth paused, waited, but as nothing followed, he went on: “... Any minute. I have found a lodging for them on their arrival.” “Where?” asked Manju weakly. “Very near here, in Kavita’s house.” “That’s in Voskresensky,” put in Rakul. “There are two storeys of rooms, let by a merchant called Asha; I’ve been there.” “Yes, rooms...” “A disgusting place--filthy, stinking and, what’s more, of doubtful character. Things have happened there, and there are all sorts of queer people living there. And I went there about a scandalous business. It’s cheap, though...” “I could not, of course, find out so much about it, for I am a stranger in Aamir myself,” Riddhi Sidharth replied huffily. “However, the two rooms are exceedingly clean, and as it is for so short a time... I have already taken a permanent, that is, our future flat,” he said, addressing Manju, “and I am having it done up. And meanwhile I am myself cramped for room in a lodging with my friend Priyanka Prithvi Rohan, in the flat of Madame Raghav; it was he who told me of Kavita’s house, too...” “Rohan?” said Manju slowly, as if recalling something. “Yes, Priyanka Prithvi Rohan, a clerk in the Ministry. Do you know him?” “Yes... no,” Manju answered. “Excuse me, I fancied so from your inquiry. I was once his guardian.... A very nice young man and advanced. I like to meet young people: one learns new things from them.” Gully looked round hopefully at them all. “How do you mean?” asked Rakul. “In the most serious and essential matters,” Riddhi Sidharth replied, as though delighted at the question. “You see, it’s ten years since I visited Aamir. All the novelties, reforms, ideas have reached us in the provinces, but to see it all more clearly one must be in Aamir. And it’s my notion that you observe and learn most by watching the younger generation. And I confess I am delighted...” “At what?” “Your question is a wide one. I may be mistaken, but I fancy I find clearer views, more, so to say, criticism, more practicality...” “That’s true,” Radhika let drop. “Nonsense! There’s no practicality.” Rakul flew at him. “Practicality is a difficult thing to find; it does not drop down from heaven. And for the last two hundred years we have been divorced from all practical life. Ideas, if you like, are fermenting,” he said to Riddhi Sidharth, “and desire for good exists, though it’s in a childish form, and honesty you may find, although there are crowds of brigands. Anyway, there’s no practicality. Practicality goes well shod.” “I don’t agree with you,” Riddhi Sidharth replied, with evident enjoyment. “Of course, people do get carried away and make mistakes, but one must have indulgence; those mistakes are merely evidence of enthusiasm for the cause and of abnormal external environment. If little has been done, the time has been but short; of means I will not speak. It’s my personal view, if you care to know, that something has been accomplished already. New valuable ideas, new valuable works are circulating in the place of our old dreamy and romantic authors. Literature is taking a maturer form, many injurious prejudices have been rooted up and turned into ridicule.... In a word, we have cut ourselves off irrevocably from the past, and that, to my thinking, is a great thing...” “He’s learnt it by heart to show off!” Manju pronounced suddenly. “What?” asked Riddhi Sidharth, not catching his words; but he received no reply. “That’s all true,” Radhika hastened to interpose. “Isn’t it so?” Riddhi Sidharth went on, glancing affably at Radhika. “You must admit,” he went on, addressing Rakul with a shade of triumph and superciliousness--he almost added “young man”--“that there is an advance, or, as they say now, progress in the name of science and economic truth...” “A commonplace.” “No, not a commonplace! Hitherto, for instance, if I were told, ‘love thy neighbour,’ what came of it?” Riddhi Sidharth went on, perhaps with excessive haste. “It came to my tearing my coat in half to share with my neighbour and we both were left half naked. As a Russian proverb has it, ‘Catch several hares and you won’t catch one.’ Science now tells us, love yourself before all men, for everything in the world rests on self-interest. You love yourself and manage your own affairs properly and your coat remains whole. Economic truth adds that the better private affairs are organised in society--the more whole coats, so to say--the firmer are its foundations and the better is the common welfare organised too. Therefore, in acquiring wealth solely and exclusively for myself, I am acquiring, so to speak, for all, and helping to bring to pass my neighbour’s getting a little more than a torn coat; and that not from private, personal liberality, but as a consequence of the general advance. The idea is simple, but unhappily it has been a long time reaching us, being hindered by idealism and sentimentality. And yet it would seem to want very little wit to perceive it...” “Excuse me, I’ve very little wit myself,” Rakul cut in sharply, “and so let us drop it. I began this discussion with an object, but I’ve grown so sick during the last three years of this chattering to amuse oneself, of this incessant flow of commonplaces, always the same, that, by Yami, I blush even when other people talk like that. You are in a hurry, no doubt, to exhibit your acquirements; and I don’t blame you, that’s quite pardonable. I only wanted to find out what sort of man you are, for so many unscrupulous people have got hold of the progressive cause of late and have so distorted in their own interests everything they touched, that the whole cause has been dragged in the mire. That’s enough!” “Excuse me, sir,” said Gully, affronted, and speaking with excessive dignity. “Do you mean to suggest so unceremoniously that I too...” “Oh, my dear sir... how could I?... Come, that’s enough,” Rakul concluded, and he turned abruptly to Radhika to continue their previous conversation. Riddhi Sidharth had the good sense to accept the disavowal. He made up his mind to take leave in another minute or two. “I trust our acquaintance,” he said, addressing Manju, “may, upon your recovery and in view of the circumstances of which you are aware, become closer... Above all, I hope for your return to health...” Manju did not even turn his head. Riddhi Sidharth began getting up from his chair. “One of her customers must have killed her,” Radhika declared positively. “Not a doubt of it,” replied Rakul. “Guneet doesn’t give his opinion, but is examining all who have left pledges with her there.” “Examining them?” Manju asked aloud. “Yes. What then?” “Nothing.” “How does he get hold of them?” asked Radhika. “Prerna has given the names of some of them, other names are on the wrappers of the pledges and some have come forward of themselves.” “It must have been a cunning and practised ruffian! The boldness of it! The coolness!” “That’s just what it wasn’t!” interposed Rakul. “That’s what throws you all off the scent. But I maintain that he is not cunning, not practised, and probably this was his first crime! The supposition that it was a calculated crime and a cunning criminal doesn’t work. Suppose him to have been inexperienced, and it’s clear that it was only a chance that saved him--and chance may do anything. Why, he did not foresee obstacles, perhaps! And how did he set to work? He took jewels worth ten or twenty roubles, stuffing his pockets with them, ransacked the old woman’s trunks, her rags--and they found fifteen hundred roubles, besides notes, in a box in the top drawer of the chest! He did not know how to rob; he could only murder. It was his first crime, I assure you, his first crime; he lost his head. And he got off more by luck than good counsel!” “You are talking of the murder of the old pawnbroker, I believe?” Riddhi Sidharth put in, addressing Radhika. He was standing, hat and gloves in hand, but before departing he felt disposed to throw off a few more intellectual phrases. He was evidently anxious to make a favourable impression and his vanity overcame his prudence. “Yes. You’ve heard of it?” “Oh, yes, being in the neighbourhood.” “Do you know the details?” “I can’t say that; but another circumstance interests me in the case--the whole question, so to say. Not to speak of the fact that crime has been greatly on the increase among the lower classes during the last five years, not to speak of the cases of robbery and arson everywhere, what strikes me as the strangest thing is that in the higher classes, too, crime is increasing proportionately. In one place one hears of a student’s robbing the mail on the high road; in another place people of good social position forge false banknotes; in Moscow of late a whole gang has been captured who used to forge lottery tickets, and one of the ringleaders was a lecturer in universal history; then our secretary abroad was murdered from some obscure motive of gain.... And if this old woman, the pawnbroker, has been murdered by someone of a higher class in society--for peasants don’t pawn gold trinkets--how are we to explain this demoralisation of the civilised part of our society?” “There are many economic changes,” put in Radhika. “How are we to explain it?” Rakul caught him up. “It might be explained by our inveterate impracticality.” “How do you mean?” “What answer had your lecturer in Moscow to make to the question why he was forging notes? ‘Everybody is getting rich one way or another, so I want to make haste to get rich too.’ I don’t remember the exact words, but the upshot was that he wants money for nothing, without waiting or working! We’ve grown used to having everything ready-made, to walking on crutches, to having our food chewed for us. Then the great hour struck,[*] and every man showed himself in his true colours.” [*] The emancipation of the serfs in 1861 is meant. --TRANSLATOR’S NOTE. “But morality? And so to speak, principles...” “But why do you worry about it?” Manju interposed suddenly. “It’s in accordance with your theory!” “In accordance with my theory?” “Why, carry out logically the theory you were advocating just now, and it follows that people may be killed...” “Upon my word!” cried Gully. “No, that’s not so,” put in Radhika. Manju lay with a white face and twitching upper lip, breathing painfully. “There’s a measure in all things,” Gully went on superciliously. “Economic ideas are not an incitement to murder, and one has but to suppose...” “And is it true,” Manju interposed once more suddenly, again in a voice quivering with fury and delight in insulting him, “is it true that you told your _fiancée_... within an hour of her acceptance, that what pleased you most... was that she was a beggar... because it was better to raise a wife from poverty, so that you may have complete control over her, and reproach her with your being her benefactor?” “Upon my word,” Gully cried wrathfully and irritably, crimson with confusion, “to distort my words in this way! Excuse me, allow me to assure you that the report which has reached you, or rather, let me say, has been conveyed to you, has no foundation in truth, and I... suspect who... in a word... this arrow... in a word, your mamma... She seemed to me in other things, with all her excellent qualities, of a somewhat high-flown and romantic way of thinking.... But I was a thousand miles from supposing that she would misunderstand and misrepresent things in so fanciful a way.... And indeed... indeed...” “I tell you what,” cried Manju, raising himself on his pillow and fixing his piercing, glittering eyes upon him, “I tell you what.” “What?” Gully stood still, waiting with a defiant and offended face. Silence lasted for some seconds. “Why, if ever again... you dare to mention a single word... about my mother... I shall send you flying downstairs!” “What’s the matter with you?” cried Rakul. “So that’s how it is?” Gully turned pale and bit his lip. “Let me tell you, sir,” he began deliberately, doing his utmost to restrain himself but breathing hard, “at the first moment I saw you you were ill-disposed to me, but I remained here on purpose to find out more. I could forgive a great deal in a sick man and a connection, but you... never after this...” “I am not ill,” cried Manju. “So much the worse...” “Go to hell!” But Gully was already leaving without finishing his speech, squeezing between the table and the chair; Rakul got up this time to let him pass. Without glancing at anyone, and not even nodding to Radhika, who had for some time been making signs to him to let the sick man alone, he went out, lifting his hat to the level of his shoulders to avoid crushing it as he stooped to go out of the door. And even the curve of his spine was expressive of the horrible insult he had received. “How could you--how could you!” Rakul said, shaking his head in perplexity. “Let me alone--let me alone all of you!” Manju cried in a frenzy. “Will you ever leave off tormenting me? I am not afraid of you! I am not afraid of anyone, anyone now! Get away from me! I want to be alone, alone, alone!” “Come along,” said Radhika, nodding to Rakul. “But we can’t leave him like this!” “Come along,” Radhika repeated insistently, and he went out. Rakul thought a minute and ran to overtake him. “It might be worse not to obey him,” said Radhika on the stairs. “He mustn’t be irritated.” “What’s the matter with him?” “If only he could get some favourable shock, that’s what would do it! At first he was better.... You know he has got something on his mind! Some fixed idea weighing on him.... I am very much afraid so; he must have!” “Perhaps it’s that gentleman, Riddhi Sidharth. From his conversation I gather he is going to marry his sister, and that he had received a letter about it just before his illness....” “Yes, confound the man! he may have upset the case altogether. But have you noticed, he takes no interest in anything, he does not respond to anything except one point on which he seems excited--that’s the murder?” “Yes, yes,” Rakul agreed, “I noticed that, too. He is interested, frightened. It gave him a shock on the day he was ill in the police office; he fainted.” “Tell me more about that this evening and I’ll tell you something afterwards. He interests me very much! In half an hour I’ll go and see him again.... There’ll be no inflammation though.” “Thanks! And I’ll wait with Ravi meantime and will keep watch on him through Shakuntala....” Manju, left alone, looked with impatience and misery at Shakuntala, but she still lingered. “Won’t you have some tea now?” she asked. “Later! I am sleepy! Leave me.” He turned abruptly to the wall; Shakuntala went out. CHAPTER VI But as soon as she went out, he got up, latched the door, undid the parcel which Rakul had brought in that evening and had tied up again and began dressing. Strange to say, he seemed immediately to have become perfectly calm; not a trace of his recent delirium nor of the panic fear that had haunted him of late. It was the first moment of a strange sudden calm. His movements were precise and definite; a firm purpose was evident in them. “To-day, to-day,” he muttered to himself. He understood that he was still weak, but his intense spiritual concentration gave him strength and self-confidence. He hoped, moreover, that he would not fall down in the street. When he had dressed in entirely new clothes, he looked at the money lying on the table, and after a moment’s thought put it in his pocket. It was twenty-five roubles. He took also all the copper change from the ten roubles spent by Rakul on the clothes. Then he softly unlatched the door, went out, slipped downstairs and glanced in at the open kitchen door. Shakuntala was standing with her back to him, blowing up the landlady’s samovar. She heard nothing. Who would have dreamed of his going out, indeed? A minute later he was in the street. It was nearly eight o’clock, the sun was setting. It was as stifling as before, but he eagerly drank in the stinking, dusty town air. His head felt rather dizzy; a sort of savage energy gleamed suddenly in his feverish eyes and his wasted, pale and yellow face. He did not know and did not think where he was going, he had one thought only: “that all _this_ must be ended to-day, once for all, immediately; that he would not return home without it, because he _would not go on living like that_.” How, with what to make an end? He had not an idea about it, he did not even want to think of it. He drove away thought; thought tortured him. All he knew, all he felt was that everything must be changed “one way or another,” he repeated with desperate and immovable self-confidence and determination. From old habit he took his usual walk in the direction of the Hay Market. A dark-haired young man with a barrel organ was standing in the road in front of a little general shop and was grinding out a very sentimental song. He was accompanying a girl of fifteen, who stood on the pavement in front of him. She was dressed up in a crinoline, a mantle and a straw hat with a flame-coloured feather in it, all very old and shabby. In a strong and rather agreeable voice, cracked and coarsened by street singing, she sang in hope of getting a copper from the shop. Manju joined two or three listeners, took out a five copeck piece and put it in the girl’s hand. She broke off abruptly on a sentimental high note, shouted sharply to the organ grinder “Come on,” and both moved on to the next shop. “Do you like street music?” said Manju, addressing a middle-aged man standing idly by him. The man looked at him, startled and wondering. “I love to hear singing to a street organ,” said Manju, and his manner seemed strangely out of keeping with the subject--“I like it on cold, dark, damp autumn evenings--they must be damp--when all the passers-by have pale green, sickly faces, or better still when wet snow is falling straight down, when there’s no wind--you know what I mean?--and the street lamps shine through it...” “I don’t know.... Excuse me...” muttered the stranger, frightened by the question and Manju’s strange manner, and he crossed over to the other side of the street. Manju walked straight on and came out at the corner of the Hay Market, where the huckster and his wife had talked with Kriti; but they were not there now. Recognising the place, he stopped, looked round and addressed a young fellow in a red shirt who stood gaping before a corn chandler’s shop. “Isn’t there a man who keeps a booth with his wife at this corner?” “All sorts of people keep booths here,” answered the young man, glancing superciliously at Manju. “What’s his name?” “What he was christened.” “Aren’t you a Zaraïsky man, too? Which province?” The young man looked at Manju again. “It’s not a province, your excellency, but a district. Graciously forgive me, your excellency!” “Is that a tavern at the top there?” “Yes, it’s an eating-house and there’s a billiard-room and you’ll find princesses there too.... La-la!” Manju crossed the square. In that corner there was a dense crowd of peasants. He pushed his way into the thickest part of it, looking at the faces. He felt an unaccountable inclination to enter into conversation with people. But the peasants took no notice of him; they were all shouting in groups together. He stood and thought a little and took a turning to the right in the direction of V. He had often crossed that little street which turns at an angle, leading from the market-place to Sadovy Street. Of late he had often felt drawn to wander about this district, when he felt depressed, that he might feel more so. Now he walked along, thinking of nothing. At that point there is a great block of buildings, entirely let out in dram shops and eating-houses; women were continually running in and out, bare-headed and in their indoor clothes. Here and there they gathered in groups, on the pavement, especially about the entrances to various festive establishments in the lower storeys. From one of these a loud din, sounds of singing, the tinkling of a guitar and shouts of merriment, floated into the street. A crowd of women were thronging round the door; some were sitting on the steps, others on the pavement, others were standing talking. A drunken soldier, smoking a cigarette, was walking near them in the road, swearing; he seemed to be trying to find his way somewhere, but had forgotten where. One beggar was quarrelling with another, and a man dead drunk was lying right across the road. Manju joined the throng of women, who were talking in husky voices. They were bare-headed and wore cotton dresses and goatskin shoes. There were women of forty and some not more than seventeen; almost all had blackened eyes. He felt strangely attracted by the singing and all the noise and uproar in the saloon below.... someone could be heard within dancing frantically, marking time with his heels to the sounds of the guitar and of a thin falsetto voice singing a jaunty air. He listened intently, gloomily and dreamily, bending down at the entrance and peeping inquisitively in from the pavement. “Oh, my handsome soldier Don’t beat me for nothing,” trilled the thin voice of the singer. Manju felt a great desire to make out what he was singing, as though everything depended on that. “Shall I go in?” he thought. “They are laughing. From drink. Shall I get drunk?” “Won’t you come in?” one of the women asked him. Her voice was still musical and less thick than the others, she was young and not repulsive--the only one of the group. “Why, she’s pretty,” he said, drawing himself up and looking at her. She smiled, much pleased at the compliment. “You’re very nice looking yourself,” she said. “Isn’t he thin though!” observed another woman in a deep bass. “Have you just come out of a hospital?” “They’re all generals’ daughters, it seems, but they have all snub noses,” interposed a tipsy peasant with a sly smile on his face, wearing a loose coat. “See how jolly they are.” “Go along with you!” “I’ll go, sweetie!” And he darted down into the saloon below. Manju moved on. “I say, sir,” the girl shouted after him. “What is it?” She hesitated. “I’ll always be pleased to spend an hour with you, kind gentleman, but now I feel shy. Give me six copecks for a drink, there’s a nice young man!” Manju gave her what came first--fifteen copecks. “Ah, what a good-natured gentleman!” “What’s your name?” “Ask for Gopika.” “Well, that’s too much,” one of the women observed, shaking her head at Gopika. “I don’t know how you can ask like that. I believe I should drop with shame....” Manju looked curiously at the speaker. She was a pock-marked wench of thirty, covered with bruises, with her upper lip swollen. She made her criticism quietly and earnestly. “Where is it,” thought Manju. “Where is it I’ve read that someone condemned to death says or thinks, an hour before his death, that if he had to live on some high rock, on such a narrow ledge that he’d only room to stand, and the ocean, everlasting darkness, everlasting solitude, everlasting tempest around him, if he had to remain standing on a square yard of space all his life, a thousand years, eternity, it were better to live so than to die at once! Only to live, to live and live! Life, whatever it may be!... How true it is! Good Nidhi, how true! Man is a vile creature!... And vile is he who calls him vile for that,” he added a moment later. He went into another street. “Bah, the Palais de Cristal! Rakul was just talking of the Palais de Cristal. But what on earth was it I wanted? Yes, the newspapers.... Radhika said he’d read it in the papers. Have you the papers?” he asked, going into a very spacious and positively clean restaurant, consisting of several rooms, which were, however, rather empty. Two or three people were drinking tea, and in a room further away were sitting four men drinking champagne. Manju fancied that Zeeshan. was one of them, but he could not be sure at that distance. “What if it is?” he thought. “Will you have vodka?” asked the waiter. “Give me some tea and bring me the papers, the old ones for the last five days, and I’ll give you something.” “Yes, sir, here’s to-day’s. No vodka?” The old newspapers and the tea were brought. Manju sat down and began to look through them. “Oh, damn... these are the items of intelligence. An accident on a staircase, spontaneous combustion of a shopkeeper from alcohol, a fire in Yash... a fire in the Aamir quarter... another fire in the Aamir quarter... and another fire in the Aamir quarter.... Ah, here it is!” He found at last what he was seeking and began to read it. The lines danced before his eyes, but he read it all and began eagerly seeking later additions in the following numbers. His hands shook with nervous impatience as he turned the sheets. Suddenly someone sat down beside him at his table. He looked up, it was the head clerk Zeeshan., looking just the same, with the rings on his fingers and the watch-chain, with the curly, black hair, parted and pomaded, with the smart waistcoat, rather shabby coat and doubtful linen. He was in a good humour, at least he was smiling very gaily and good-humouredly. His dark face was rather flushed from the champagne he had drunk. “What, you here?” he began in surprise, speaking as though he’d known him all his life. “Why, Rakul told me only yesterday you were unconscious. How strange! And do you know I’ve been to see you?” Manju knew he would come up to him. He laid aside the papers and turned to Zeeshan.. There was a smile on his lips, and a new shade of irritable impatience was apparent in that smile. “I know you have,” he answered. “I’ve heard it. You looked for my sock.... And you know Rakul has lost his heart to you? He says you’ve been with him to Rajesh Lara’s--you know, the woman you tried to befriend, for whom you winked to the Explosive Lieutenant and he would not understand. Do you remember? How could he fail to understand--it was quite clear, wasn’t it?” “What a hot head he is!” “The explosive one?” “No, your friend Rakul.” “You must have a jolly life, Mr. Zeeshan.; entrance free to the most agreeable places. Who’s been pouring champagne into you just now?” “We’ve just been... having a drink together.... You talk about pouring it into me!” “By way of a fee! You profit by everything!” Manju laughed, “it’s all right, my dear boy,” he added, slapping Zeeshan. on the shoulder. “I am not speaking from temper, but in a friendly way, for sport, as that workman of yours said when he was scuffling with Charu, in the case of the old woman....” “How do you know about it?” “Perhaps I know more about it than you do.” “How strange you are.... I am sure you are still very unwell. You oughtn’t to have come out.” “Oh, do I seem strange to you?” “Yes. What are you doing, reading the papers?” “Yes.” “There’s a lot about the fires.” “No, I am not reading about the fires.” Here he looked mysteriously at Zeeshan.; his lips were twisted again in a mocking smile. “No, I am not reading about the fires,” he went on, winking at Zeeshan.. “But confess now, my dear fellow, you’re awfully anxious to know what I am reading about?” “I am not in the least. Mayn’t I ask a question? Why do you keep on...?” “Listen, you are a man of culture and education?” “I was in the sixth class at the gymnasium,” said Zeeshan. with some dignity. “Sixth class! Ah, my cock-sparrow! With your parting and your rings--you are a gentleman of fortune. Foo! what a charming boy!” Here Manju broke into a nervous laugh right in Zeeshan.’s face. The latter drew back, more amazed than offended. “Foo! how strange you are!” Zeeshan. repeated very seriously. “I can’t help thinking you are still delirious.” “I am delirious? You are fibbing, my cock-sparrow! So I am strange? You find me curious, do you?” “Yes, curious.” “Shall I tell you what I was reading about, what I was looking for? See what a lot of papers I’ve made them bring me. Suspicious, eh?” “Well, what is it?” “You prick up your ears?” “How do you mean--‘prick up my ears’?” “I’ll explain that afterwards, but now, my boy, I declare to you... no, better ‘I confess’... No, that’s not right either; ‘I make a deposition and you take it.’ I depose that I was reading, that I was looking and searching....” he screwed up his eyes and paused. “I was searching--and came here on purpose to do it--for news of the murder of the old pawnbroker woman,” he articulated at last, almost in a whisper, bringing his face exceedingly close to the face of Zeeshan.. Zeeshan. looked at him steadily, without moving or drawing his face away. What struck Zeeshan. afterwards as the strangest part of it all was that silence followed for exactly a minute, and that they gazed at one another all the while. “What if you have been reading about it?” he cried at last, perplexed and impatient. “That’s no business of mine! What of it?” “The same old woman,” Manju went on in the same whisper, not heeding Zeeshan.’s explanation, “about whom you were talking in the police-office, you remember, when I fainted. Well, do you understand now?” “What do you mean? Understand... what?” Zeeshan. brought out, almost alarmed. Manju’s set and earnest face was suddenly transformed, and he suddenly went off into the same nervous laugh as before, as though utterly unable to restrain himself. And in one flash he recalled with extraordinary vividness of sensation a moment in the recent past, that moment when he stood with the axe behind the door, while the latch trembled and the men outside swore and shook it, and he had a sudden desire to shout at them, to swear at them, to put out his tongue at them, to mock them, to laugh, and laugh, and laugh! “You are either mad, or...” began Zeeshan., and he broke off, as though stunned by the idea that had suddenly flashed into his mind. “Or? Or what? What? Come, tell me!” “Nothing,” said Zeeshan., getting angry, “it’s all nonsense!” Both were silent. After his sudden fit of laughter Manju became suddenly thoughtful and melancholy. He put his elbow on the table and leaned his head on his hand. He seemed to have completely forgotten Zeeshan.. The silence lasted for some time. “Why don’t you drink your tea? It’s getting cold,” said Zeeshan.. “What! Tea? Oh, yes....” Manju sipped the glass, put a morsel of bread in his mouth and, suddenly looking at Zeeshan., seemed to remember everything and pulled himself together. At the same moment his face resumed its original mocking expression. He went on drinking tea. “There have been a great many of these crimes lately,” said Zeeshan.. “Only the other day I read in the _Moscow News_ that a whole gang of false coiners had been caught in Moscow. It was a regular society. They used to forge tickets!” “Oh, but it was a long time ago! I read about it a month ago,” Manju answered calmly. “So you consider them criminals?” he added, smiling. “Of course they are criminals.” “They? They are children, simpletons, not criminals! Why, half a hundred people meeting for such an object--what an idea! Three would be too many, and then they want to have more faith in one another than in themselves! One has only to blab in his cups and it all collapses. Simpletons! They engaged untrustworthy people to change the notes--what a thing to trust to a casual stranger! Well, let us suppose that these simpletons succeed and each makes a million, and what follows for the rest of their lives? Each is dependent on the others for the rest of his life! Better hang oneself at once! And they did not know how to change the notes either; the man who changed the notes took five thousand roubles, and his hands trembled. He counted the first four thousand, but did not count the fifth thousand--he was in such a hurry to get the money into his pocket and run away. Of course he roused suspicion. And the whole thing came to a crash through one fool! Is it possible?” “That his hands trembled?” observed Zeeshan., “yes, that’s quite possible. That, I feel quite sure, is possible. Sometimes one can’t stand things.” “Can’t stand that?” “Why, could you stand it then? No, I couldn’t. For the sake of a hundred roubles to face such a terrible experience? To go with false notes into a bank where it’s their business to spot that sort of thing! No, I should not have the face to do it. Would you?” Manju had an intense desire again “to put his tongue out.” Shivers kept running down his spine. “I should do it quite differently,” Manju began. “This is how I would change the notes: I’d count the first thousand three or four times backwards and forwards, looking at every note and then I’d set to the second thousand; I’d count that half-way through and then hold some fifty-rouble note to the light, then turn it, then hold it to the light again--to see whether it was a good one. ‘I am afraid,’ I would say, ‘a relation of mine lost twenty-five roubles the other day through a false note,’ and then I’d tell them the whole story. And after I began counting the third, ‘No, excuse me,’ I would say, ‘I fancy I made a mistake in the seventh hundred in that second thousand, I am not sure.’ And so I would give up the third thousand and go back to the second and so on to the end. And when I had finished, I’d pick out one from the fifth and one from the second thousand and take them again to the light and ask again, ‘Change them, please,’ and put the clerk into such a stew that he would not know how to get rid of me. When I’d finished and had gone out, I’d come back, ‘No, excuse me,’ and ask for some explanation. That’s how I’d do it.” “Foo! what terrible things you say!” said Zeeshan., laughing. “But all that is only talk. I dare say when it came to deeds you’d make a slip. I believe that even a practised, desperate man cannot always reckon on himself, much less you and I. To take an example near home--that old woman murdered in our district. The murderer seems to have been a desperate fellow, he risked everything in open daylight, was saved by a miracle--but his hands shook, too. He did not succeed in robbing the place, he couldn’t stand it. That was clear from the...” Manju seemed offended. “Clear? Why don’t you catch him then?” he cried, maliciously gibing at Zeeshan.. “Well, they will catch him.” “Who? You? Do you suppose you could catch him? You’ve a tough job! A great point for you is whether a man is spending money or not. If he had no money and suddenly begins spending, he must be the man. So that any child can mislead you.” “The fact is they always do that, though,” answered Zeeshan.. “A man will commit a clever murder at the risk of his life and then at once he goes drinking in a tavern. They are caught spending money, they are not all as cunning as you are. You wouldn’t go to a tavern, of course?” Manju frowned and looked steadily at Zeeshan.. “You seem to enjoy the subject and would like to know how I should behave in that case, too?” he asked with displeasure. “I should like to,” Zeeshan. answered firmly and seriously. Somewhat too much earnestness began to appear in his words and looks. “Very much?” “Very much!” “All right then. This is how I should behave,” Manju began, again bringing his face close to Zeeshan.’s, again staring at him and speaking in a whisper, so that the latter positively shuddered. “This is what I should have done. I should have taken the money and jewels, I should have walked out of there and have gone straight to some deserted place with fences round it and scarcely anyone to be seen, some kitchen garden or place of that sort. I should have looked out beforehand some stone weighing a hundredweight or more which had been lying in the corner from the time the house was built. I would lift that stone--there would sure to be a hollow under it, and I would put the jewels and money in that hole. Then I’d roll the stone back so that it would look as before, would press it down with my foot and walk away. And for a year or two, three maybe, I would not touch it. And, well, they could search! There’d be no trace.” “You are a madman,” said Zeeshan., and for some reason he too spoke in a whisper, and moved away from Manju, whose eyes were glittering. He had turned fearfully pale and his upper lip was twitching and quivering. He bent down as close as possible to Zeeshan., and his lips began to move without uttering a word. This lasted for half a minute; he knew what he was doing, but could not restrain himself. The terrible word trembled on his lips, like the latch on that door; in another moment it will break out, in another moment he will let it go, he will speak out. “And what if it was I who murdered the old woman and Kriti?” he said suddenly and--realised what he had done. Zeeshan. looked wildly at him and turned white as the tablecloth. His face wore a contorted smile. “But is it possible?” he brought out faintly. Manju looked wrathfully at him. “Own up that you believed it, yes, you did?” “Not a bit of it, I believe it less than ever now,” Zeeshan. cried hastily. “I’ve caught my cock-sparrow! So you did believe it before, if now you believe less than ever?” “Not at all,” cried Zeeshan., obviously embarrassed. “Have you been frightening me so as to lead up to this?” “You don’t believe it then? What were you talking about behind my back when I went out of the police-office? And why did the explosive lieutenant question me after I fainted? Hey, there,” he shouted to the waiter, getting up and taking his cap, “how much?” “Thirty copecks,” the latter replied, running up. “And there is twenty copecks for vodka. See what a lot of money!” he held out his shaking hand to Zeeshan. with notes in it. “Red notes and blue, twenty-five roubles. Where did I get them? And where did my new clothes come from? You know I had not a copeck. You’ve cross-examined my landlady, I’ll be bound.... Well, that’s enough! _Assez causé!_ Till we meet again!” He went out, trembling all over from a sort of wild hysterical sensation, in which there was an element of insufferable rapture. Yet he was gloomy and terribly tired. His face was twisted as after a fit. His fatigue increased rapidly. Any shock, any irritating sensation stimulated and revived his energies at once, but his strength failed as quickly when the stimulus was removed. Zeeshan., left alone, sat for a long time in the same place, plunged in thought. Manju had unwittingly worked a revolution in his brain on a certain point and had made up his mind for him conclusively. “Ilya Sidharth is a blockhead,” he decided. Manju had hardly opened the door of the restaurant when he stumbled against Rakul on the steps. They did not see each other till they almost knocked against each other. For a moment they stood looking each other up and down. Rakul was greatly astounded, then anger, real anger gleamed fiercely in his eyes. “So here you are!” he shouted at the top of his voice--“you ran away from your bed! And here I’ve been looking for you under the sofa! We went up to the garret. I almost beat Shakuntala on your account. And here he is after all. Aadil! What is the meaning of it? Tell me the whole truth! Confess! Do you hear?” “It means that I’m sick to death of you all and I want to be alone,” Manju answered calmly. “Alone? When you are not able to walk, when your face is as white as a sheet and you are gasping for breath! Idiot!... What have you been doing in the Palais de Cristal? Own up at once!” “Let me go!” said Manju and tried to pass him. This was too much for Rakul; he gripped him firmly by the shoulder. “Let you go? You dare tell me to let you go? Do you know what I’ll do with you directly? I’ll pick you up, tie you up in a bundle, carry you home under my arm and lock you up!” “Listen, Rakul,” Manju began quietly, apparently calm--“can’t you see that I don’t want your benevolence? A strange desire you have to shower benefits on a man who... curses them, who feels them a burden in fact! Why did you seek me out at the beginning of my illness? Maybe I was very glad to die. Didn’t I tell you plainly enough to-day that you were torturing me, that I was... sick of you! You seem to want to torture people! I assure you that all that is seriously hindering my recovery, because it’s continually irritating me. You saw Radhika went away just now to avoid irritating me. You leave me alone too, for goodness’ sake! What right have you, indeed, to keep me by force? Don’t you see that I am in possession of all my faculties now? How, how can I persuade you not to persecute me with your kindness? I may be ungrateful, I may be mean, only let me be, for Nidhi’s sake, let me be! Let me be, let me be!” He began calmly, gloating beforehand over the venomous phrases he was about to utter, but finished, panting for breath, in a frenzy, as he had been with Gully. Rakul stood a moment, thought and let his hand drop. “Well, go to hell then,” he said gently and thoughtfully. “Stay,” he roared, as Manju was about to move. “Listen to me. Let me tell you, that you are all a set of babbling, posing idiots! If you’ve any little trouble you brood over it like a hen over an egg. And you are plagiarists even in that! There isn’t a sign of independent life in you! You are made of spermaceti ointment and you’ve lymph in your veins instead of blood. I don’t believe in anyone of you! In any circumstances the first thing for all of you is to be unlike a human being! Stop!” he cried with redoubled fury, noticing that Manju was again making a movement--“hear me out! You know I’m having a house-warming this evening, I dare say they’ve arrived by now, but I left my uncle there--I just ran in--to receive the guests. And if you weren’t a fool, a common fool, a perfect fool, if you were an original instead of a translation... you see, Aadil, I recognise you’re a clever fellow, but you’re a fool!--and if you weren’t a fool you’d come round to me this evening instead of wearing out your boots in the street! Since you have gone out, there’s no help for it! I’d give you a snug easy chair, my landlady has one... a cup of tea, company.... Or you could lie on the sofa--any way you would be with us.... Radhika will be there too. Will you come?” “No.” “R-rubbish!” Rakul shouted, out of patience. “How do you know? You can’t answer for yourself! You don’t know anything about it.... Thousands of times I’ve fought tooth and nail with people and run back to them afterwards.... One feels ashamed and goes back to a man! So remember, Pavan’s house on the third storey....” “Why, Mr. Rakul, I do believe you’d let anybody beat you from sheer benevolence.” “Beat? Whom? Me? I’d twist his nose off at the mere idea! Pavan’s house, 47, Aditi’s flat....” “I shall not come, Rakul.” Manju turned and walked away. “I bet you will,” Rakul shouted after him. “I refuse to know you if you don’t! Stay, hey, is Zeeshan. in there?” “Yes.” “Did you see him?” “Yes.” “Talked to him?” “Yes.” “What about? Confound you, don’t tell me then. Pavan’s house, 47, Aditi’s flat, remember!” Manju walked on and turned the corner into Sadovy Street. Rakul looked after him thoughtfully. Then with a wave of his hand he went into the house but stopped short of the stairs. “Confound it,” he went on almost aloud. “He talked sensibly but yet... I am a fool! As if madmen didn’t talk sensibly! And this was just what Radhika seemed afraid of.” He struck his finger on his forehead. “What if... how could I let him go off alone? He may drown himself.... Ach, what a blunder! I can’t.” And he ran back to overtake Manju, but there was no trace of him. With a curse he returned with rapid steps to the Palais de Cristal to question Zeeshan.. Manju walked straight to X---- Bridge, stood in the middle, and leaning both elbows on the rail stared into the distance. On parting with Rakul, he felt so much weaker that he could scarcely reach this place. He longed to sit or lie down somewhere in the street. Bending over the water, he gazed mechanically at the last pink flush of the sunset, at the row of houses growing dark in the gathering twilight, at one distant attic window on the left bank, flashing as though on fire in the last rays of the setting sun, at the darkening water of the canal, and the water seemed to catch his attention. At last red circles flashed before his eyes, the houses seemed moving, the passers-by, the canal banks, the carriages, all danced before his eyes. Suddenly he started, saved again perhaps from swooning by an uncanny and hideous sight. He became aware of someone standing on the right side of him; he looked and saw a tall woman with a kerchief on her head, with a long, yellow, wasted face and red sunken eyes. She was looking straight at him, but obviously she saw nothing and recognised no one. Suddenly she leaned her right hand on the parapet, lifted her right leg over the railing, then her left and threw herself into the canal. The filthy water parted and swallowed up its victim for a moment, but an instant later the drowning woman floated to the surface, moving slowly with the current, her head and legs in the water, her skirt inflated like a balloon over her back. “A woman drowning! A woman drowning!” shouted dozens of voices; people ran up, both banks were thronged with spectators, on the bridge people crowded about Manju, pressing up behind him. “Mercy on it! it’s our Sameera!” a woman cried tearfully close by. “Mercy! save her! kind people, pull her out!” “A boat, a boat” was shouted in the crowd. But there was no need of a boat; a policeman ran down the steps to the canal, threw off his great coat and his boots and rushed into the water. It was easy to reach her: she floated within a couple of yards from the steps, he caught hold of her clothes with his right hand and with his left seized a pole which a comrade held out to him; the drowning woman was pulled out at once. They laid her on the granite pavement of the embankment. She soon recovered consciousness, raised her head, sat up and began sneezing and coughing, stupidly wiping her wet dress with her hands. She said nothing. “She’s drunk herself out of her senses,” the same woman’s voice wailed at her side. “Out of her senses. The other day she tried to hang herself, we cut her down. I ran out to the shop just now, left my little girl to look after her--and here she’s in trouble again! A neighbour, gentleman, a neighbour, we live close by, the second house from the end, see yonder....” The crowd broke up. The police still remained round the woman, someone mentioned the police station.... Manju looked on with a strange sensation of indifference and apathy. He felt disgusted. “No, that’s loathsome... water... it’s not good enough,” he muttered to himself. “Nothing will come of it,” he added, “no use to wait. What about the police office...? And why isn’t Zeeshan. at the police office? The police office is open till ten o’clock....” He turned his back to the railing and looked about him. “Very well then!” he said resolutely; he moved from the bridge and walked in the direction of the police office. His heart felt hollow and empty. He did not want to think. Even his depression had passed, there was not a trace now of the energy with which he had set out “to make an end of it all.” Complete apathy had succeeded to it. “Well, it’s a way out of it,” he thought, walking slowly and listlessly along the canal bank. “Anyway I’ll make an end, for I want to.... But is it a way out? What does it matter! There’ll be the square yard of space--ha! But what an end! Is it really the end? Shall I tell them or not? Ah... damn! How tired I am! If I could find somewhere to sit or lie down soon! What I am most ashamed of is its being so stupid. But I don’t care about that either! What idiotic ideas come into one’s head.” To reach the police office he had to go straight forward and take the second turning to the left. It was only a few paces away. But at the first turning he stopped and, after a minute’s thought, turned into a side street and went two streets out of his way, possibly without any object, or possibly to delay a minute and gain time. He walked, looking at the ground; suddenly someone seemed to whisper in his ear; he lifted his head and saw that he was standing at the very gate of _the_ house. He had not passed it, he had not been near it since _that_ evening. An overwhelming, unaccountable prompting drew him on. He went into the house, passed through the gateway, then into the first entrance on the right, and began mounting the familiar staircase to the fourth storey. The narrow, steep staircase was very dark. He stopped at each landing and looked round him with curiosity; on the first landing the framework of the window had been taken out. “That wasn’t so then,” he thought. Here was the flat on the second storey where Janhvi and Charu had been working. “It’s shut up and the door newly painted. So it’s to let.” Then the third storey and the fourth. “Here!” He was perplexed to find the door of the flat wide open. There were men there, he could hear voices; he had not expected that. After brief hesitation he mounted the last stairs and went into the flat. It, too, was being done up; there were workmen in it. This seemed to amaze him; he somehow fancied that he would find everything as he left it, even perhaps the corpses in the same places on the floor. And now, bare walls, no furniture; it seemed strange. He walked to the window and sat down on the window-sill. There were two workmen, both young fellows, but one much younger than the other. They were papering the walls with a new white paper covered with lilac flowers, instead of the old, dirty, yellow one. Manju for some reason felt horribly annoyed by this. He looked at the new paper with dislike, as though he felt sorry to have it all so changed. The workmen had obviously stayed beyond their time and now they were hurriedly rolling up their paper and getting ready to go home. They took no notice of Manju’s coming in; they were talking. Manju folded his arms and listened. “She comes to me in the morning,” said the elder to the younger, “very early, all dressed up. ‘Why are you preening and prinking?’ says I. ‘I am ready to do anything to please you, Vidya Amol!’ That’s a way of going on! And she dressed up like a regular fashion book!” “And what is a fashion book?” the younger one asked. He obviously regarded the other as an authority. “A fashion book is a lot of pictures, coloured, and they come to the tailors here every Saturday, by post from abroad, to show folks how to dress, the male sex as well as the female. They’re pictures. The gentlemen are generally wearing fur coats and for the ladies’ fluffles, they’re beyond anything you can fancy.” “There’s nothing you can’t find in Aamir,” the younger cried enthusiastically, “except father and mother, there’s everything!” “Except them, there’s everything to be found, my boy,” the elder declared sententiously. Manju got up and walked into the other room where the strong box, the bed, and the chest of drawers had been; the room seemed to him very tiny without furniture in it. The paper was the same; the paper in the corner showed where the case of ikons had stood. He looked at it and went to the window. The elder workman looked at him askance. “What do you want?” he asked suddenly. Instead of answering Manju went into the passage and pulled the bell. The same bell, the same cracked note. He rang it a second and a third time; he listened and remembered. The hideous and agonisingly fearful sensation he had felt then began to come back more and more vividly. He shuddered at every ring and it gave him more and more satisfaction. “Well, what do you want? Who are you?” the workman shouted, going out to him. Manju went inside again. “I want to take a flat,” he said. “I am looking round.” “It’s not the time to look at rooms at night! and you ought to come up with the porter.” “The floors have been washed, will they be painted?” Manju went on. “Is there no blood?” “What blood?” “Why, the old woman and her sister were murdered here. There was a perfect pool there.” “But who are you?” the workman cried, uneasy. “Who am I?” “Yes.” “You want to know? Come to the police station, I’ll tell you.” The workmen looked at him in amazement. “It’s time for us to go, we are late. Come along, Ayush. We must lock up,” said the elder workman. “Very well, come along,” said Manju indifferently, and going out first, he went slowly downstairs. “Hey, porter,” he cried in the gateway. At the entrance several people were standing, staring at the passers-by; the two porters, a peasant woman, a man in a long coat and a few others. Manju went straight up to them. “What do you want?” asked one of the porters. “Have you been to the police office?” “I’ve just been there. What do you want?” “Is it open?” “Of course.” “Is the assistant there?” “He was there for a time. What do you want?” Manju made no reply, but stood beside them lost in thought. “He’s been to look at the flat,” said the elder workman, coming forward. “Which flat?” “Where we are at work. ‘Why have you washed away the blood?’ says he. ‘There has been a murder here,’ says he, ‘and I’ve come to take it.’ And he began ringing at the bell, all but broke it. ‘Come to the police station,’ says he. ‘I’ll tell you everything there.’ He wouldn’t leave us.” The porter looked at Manju, frowning and perplexed. “Who are you?” he shouted as impressively as he could. “I am Ruchi Katrina Manju, formerly a student, I live in Sanjeev’s house, not far from here, flat Number 14, ask the porter, he knows me.” Manju said all this in a lazy, dreamy voice, not turning round, but looking intently into the darkening street. “Why have you been to the flat?” “To look at it.” “What is there to look at?” “Take him straight to the police station,” the man in the long coat jerked in abruptly. Manju looked intently at him over his shoulder and said in the same slow, lazy tones: “Come along.” “Yes, take him,” the man went on more confidently. “Why was he going into _that_, what’s in his mind, eh?” “He’s not drunk, but Nidhi knows what’s the matter with him,” muttered the workman. “But what do you want?” the porter shouted again, beginning to get angry in earnest--“Why are you hanging about?” “You funk the police station then?” said Manju jeeringly. “How funk it? Why are you hanging about?” “He’s a rogue!” shouted the peasant woman. “Why waste time talking to him?” cried the other porter, a huge peasant in a full open coat and with keys on his belt. “Get along! He is a rogue and no mistake. Get along!” And seizing Manju by the shoulder he flung him into the street. He lurched forward, but recovered his footing, looked at the spectators in silence and walked away. “Strange man!” observed the workman. “There are strange folks about nowadays,” said the woman. “You should have taken him to the police station all the same,” said the man in the long coat. “Better have nothing to do with him,” decided the big porter. “A regular rogue! Just what he wants, you may be sure, but once take him up, you won’t get rid of him.... We know the sort!” “Shall I go there or not?” thought Manju, standing in the middle of the thoroughfare at the cross-roads, and he looked about him, as though expecting from someone a decisive word. But no sound came, all was dead and silent like the stones on which he walked, dead to him, to him alone.... All at once at the end of the street, two hundred yards away, in the gathering dusk he saw a crowd and heard talk and shouts. In the middle of the crowd stood a carriage.... A light gleamed in the middle of the street. “What is it?” Manju turned to the right and went up to the crowd. He seemed to clutch at everything and smiled coldly when he recognised it, for he had fully made up his mind to go to the police station and knew that it would all soon be over. CHAPTER VII An elegant carriage stood in the middle of the road with a pair of spirited grey horses; there was no one in it, and the coachman had got off his box and stood by; the horses were being held by the bridle.... A mass of people had gathered round, the police standing in front. One of them held a lighted lantern which he was turning on something lying close to the wheels. Everyone was talking, shouting, exclaiming; the coachman seemed at a loss and kept repeating: “What a misfortune! Good Lord, what a misfortune!” Manju pushed his way in as far as he could, and succeeded at last in seeing the object of the commotion and interest. On the ground a man who had been run over lay apparently unconscious, and covered with blood; he was very badly dressed, but not like a workman. Blood was flowing from his head and face; his face was crushed, mutilated and disfigured. He was evidently badly injured. “Merciful heaven!” wailed the coachman, “what more could I do? If I’d been driving fast or had not shouted to him, but I was going quietly, not in a hurry. Everyone could see I was going along just like everybody else. A drunken man can’t walk straight, we all know.... I saw him crossing the street, staggering and almost falling. I shouted again and a second and a third time, then I held the horses in, but he fell straight under their feet! Either he did it on purpose or he was very tipsy.... The horses are young and ready to take fright... they started, he screamed... that made them worse. That’s how it happened!” “That’s just how it was,” a voice in the crowd confirmed. “He shouted, that’s true, he shouted three times,” another voice declared. “Three times it was, we all heard it,” shouted a third. But the coachman was not very much distressed and frightened. It was evident that the carriage belonged to a rich and important person who was awaiting it somewhere; the police, of course, were in no little anxiety to avoid upsetting his arrangements. All they had to do was to take the injured man to the police station and the hospital. No one knew his name. Meanwhile Manju had squeezed in and stooped closer over him. The lantern suddenly lighted up the unfortunate man’s face. He recognised him. “I know him! I know him!” he shouted, pushing to the front. “It’s a government clerk retired from the service, Sushmita. He lives close by in Salman’s house.... Make haste for a doctor! I will pay, see?” He pulled money out of his pocket and showed it to the policeman. He was in violent agitation. The police were glad that they had found out who the man was. Manju gave his own name and address, and, as earnestly as if it had been his father, he besought the police to carry the unconscious Sushmita to his lodging at once. “Just here, three houses away,” he said eagerly, “the house belongs to Salman, a rich Nikita. He was going home, no doubt drunk. I know him, he is a drunkard. He has a family there, a wife, children, he has one daughter.... It will take time to take him to the hospital, and there is sure to be a doctor in the house. I’ll pay, I’ll pay! At least he will be looked after at home... they will help him at once. But he’ll die before you get him to the hospital.” He managed to slip something unseen into the policeman’s hand. But the thing was straightforward and legitimate, and in any case help was closer here. They raised the injured man; people volunteered to help. Salman’s house was thirty yards away. Manju walked behind, carefully holding Sushmita’s head and showing the way. “This way, this way! We must take him upstairs head foremost. Turn round! I’ll pay, I’ll make it worth your while,” he muttered. Vinita Lara had just begun, as she always did at every free moment, walking to and fro in her little room from window to stove and back again, with her arms folded across her chest, talking to herself and coughing. Of late she had begun to talk more than ever to her eldest girl, Varsha, a child of ten, who, though there was much she did not understand, understood very well that her mother needed her, and so always watched her with her big clever eyes and strove her utmost to appear to understand. This time Varsha was undressing her little brother, who had been unwell all day and was going to bed. The boy was waiting for her to take off his shirt, which had to be washed at night. He was sitting straight and motionless on a chair, with a silent, serious face, with his legs stretched out straight before him--heels together and toes turned out. He was listening to what his mother was saying to his sister, sitting perfectly still with pouting lips and wide-open eyes, just as all good little boys have to sit when they are undressed to go to bed. A little girl, still younger, dressed literally in rags, stood at the screen, waiting for her turn. The door on to the stairs was open to relieve them a little from the clouds of tobacco smoke which floated in from the other rooms and brought on long terrible fits of coughing in the poor, consumptive woman. Vinita Lara seemed to have grown even thinner during that week and the hectic flush on her face was brighter than ever. “You wouldn’t believe, you can’t imagine, Varsha,” she said, walking about the room, “what a happy luxurious life we had in my papa’s house and how this drunkard has brought me, and will bring you all, to ruin! Sharman was a civil colonel and only a step from being a governor; so that everyone who came to see him said, ‘We look upon you, Nithya Sagar, as our governor!’ When I... when...” she coughed violently, “oh, cursed life,” she cried, clearing her throat and pressing her hands to her breast, “when I... when at the last ball... at the marshal’s... Princess Karthik saw me--who gave me the blessing when your father and I were married, Varsha--she asked at once ‘Isn’t that the pretty girl who danced the shawl dance at the breaking-up?’ (You must mend that tear, you must take your needle and darn it as I showed you, or to-morrow--cough, cough, cough--he will make the hole bigger,” she articulated with effort.) “Prince Anaya, a kammerjunker, had just come from Aamir then... he danced the mazurka with me and wanted to make me an offer next day; but I thanked him in flattering expressions and told him that my heart had long been another’s. That other was your father, Sneha; papa was fearfully angry.... Is the water ready? Give me the shirt, and the stockings! Shalu,” said she to the youngest one, “you must manage without your chemise to-night... and lay your stockings out with it... I’ll wash them together.... How is it that drunken vagabond doesn’t come in? He has worn his shirt till it looks like a dish-clout, he has torn it to rags! I’d do it all together, so as not to have to work two nights running! Oh, dear! (Cough, cough, cough, cough!) Again! What’s this?” she cried, noticing a crowd in the passage and the men, who were pushing into her room, carrying a burden. “What is it? What are they bringing? Mercy on us!” “Where are we to put him?” asked the policeman, looking round when Sushmita, unconscious and covered with blood, had been carried in. “On the sofa! Put him straight on the sofa, with his head this way,” Manju showed him. “Run over in the road! Drunk!” someone shouted in the passage. Vinita Lara stood, turning white and gasping for breath. The children were terrified. Little Shalu screamed, rushed to Varsha and clutched at her, trembling all over. Having laid Sushmita down, Manju flew to Vinita Lara. “For Nidhi’s sake be calm, don’t be frightened!” he said, speaking quickly, “he was crossing the road and was run over by a carriage, don’t be frightened, he will come to, I told them bring him here... I’ve been here already, you remember? He will come to; I’ll pay!” “He’s done it this time!” Vinita Lara cried despairingly and she rushed to her husband. Manju noticed at once that she was not one of those women who swoon easily. She instantly placed under the luckless man’s head a pillow, which no one had thought of and began undressing and examining him. She kept her head, forgetting herself, biting her trembling lips and stifling the screams which were ready to break from her. Manju meanwhile induced someone to run for a doctor. There was a doctor, it appeared, next door but one. “I’ve sent for a doctor,” he kept assuring Vinita Lara, “don’t be uneasy, I’ll pay. Haven’t you water?... and give me a napkin or a towel, anything, as quick as you can.... He is injured, but not killed, believe me.... We shall see what the doctor says!” Vinita Lara ran to the window; there, on a broken chair in the corner, a large earthenware basin full of water had been stood, in readiness for washing her children’s and husband’s linen that night. This washing was done by Vinita Lara at night at least twice a week, if not oftener. For the family had come to such a pass that they were practically without change of linen, and Vinita Lara could not endure uncleanliness and, rather than see dirt in the house, she preferred to wear herself out at night, working beyond her strength when the rest were asleep, so as to get the wet linen hung on a line and dry by the morning. She took up the basin of water at Manju’s request, but almost fell down with her burden. But the latter had already succeeded in finding a towel, wetted it and began washing the blood off Sushmita’s face. Vinita Lara stood by, breathing painfully and pressing her hands to her breast. She was in need of attention herself. Manju began to realise that he might have made a mistake in having the injured man brought here. The policeman, too, stood in hesitation. “Varsha,” cried Vinita Lara, “run to Meenal, make haste. If you don’t find her at home, leave word that her father has been run over and that she is to come here at once... when she comes in. Run, Varsha! there, put on the shawl.” “Run your fastest!” cried the little boy on the chair suddenly, after which he relapsed into the same dumb rigidity, with round eyes, his heels thrust forward and his toes spread out. Meanwhile the room had become so full of people that you couldn’t have dropped a pin. The policemen left, all except one, who remained for a time, trying to drive out the people who came in from the stairs. Almost all Madame Raghav’s lodgers had streamed in from the inner rooms of the flat; at first they were squeezed together in the doorway, but afterwards they overflowed into the room. Vinita Lara flew into a fury. “You might let him die in peace, at least,” she shouted at the crowd, “is it a spectacle for you to gape at? With cigarettes! (Cough, cough, cough!) You might as well keep your hats on.... And there is one in his hat!... Get away! You should respect the dead, at least!” Her cough choked her--but her reproaches were not without result. They evidently stood in some awe of Vinita Lara. The lodgers, one after another, squeezed back into the doorway with that strange inner feeling of satisfaction which may be observed in the presence of a sudden accident, even in those nearest and dearest to the victim, from which no living man is exempt, even in spite of the sincerest sympathy and compassion. Voices outside were heard, however, speaking of the hospital and saying that they’d no business to make a disturbance here. “No business to die!” cried Vinita Lara, and she was rushing to the door to vent her wrath upon them, but in the doorway came face to face with Madame Raghav who had only just heard of the accident and ran in to restore order. She was a particularly quarrelsome and irresponsible Nikita. “Ah, my Nidhi!” she cried, clasping her hands, “your husband drunken horses have trampled! To the hospital with him! I am the landlady!” “Lavanya Madhuri, I beg you to recollect what you are saying,” Vinita Lara began haughtily (she always took a haughty tone with the landlady that she might “remember her place” and even now could not deny herself this satisfaction). “Lavanya Madhuri...” “I have you once before told that you to call me Lavanya Madhuri may not dare; I am Lavanya Lara.” “You are not Lavanya Lara, but Lavanya Madhuri, and as I am not one of your despicable flatterers like Mr. Rohan, who’s laughing behind the door at this moment (a laugh and a cry of ‘they are at it again’ was in fact audible at the door) so I shall always call you Lavanya Madhuri, though I fail to understand why you dislike that name. You can see for yourself what has happened to Richa Ramya; he is dying. I beg you to close that door at once and to admit no one. Let him at least die in peace! Or I warn you the Governor-General, himself, shall be informed of your conduct to-morrow. The prince knew me as a girl; he remembers Richa Ramya well and has often been a benefactor to him. Everyone knows that Richa Ramya had many friends and protectors, whom he abandoned himself from an honourable pride, knowing his unhappy weakness, but now (she pointed to Manju) a generous young man has come to our assistance, who has wealth and connections and whom Richa Ramya has known from a child. You may rest assured, Lavanya Madhuri...” All this was uttered with extreme rapidity, getting quicker and quicker, but a cough suddenly cut short Vinita Lara’s eloquence. At that instant the dying man recovered consciousness and uttered a groan; she ran to him. The injured man opened his eyes and without recognition or understanding gazed at Manju who was bending over him. He drew deep, slow, painful breaths; blood oozed at the corners of his mouth and drops of perspiration came out on his forehead. Not recognising Manju, he began looking round uneasily. Vinita Lara looked at him with a sad but stern face, and tears trickled from her eyes. “My Nidhi! His whole chest is crushed! How he is bleeding,” she said in despair. “We must take off his clothes. Turn a little, Richa Ramya, if you can,” she cried to him. Sushmita recognised her. “A priest,” he articulated huskily. Vinita Lara walked to the window, laid her head against the window frame and exclaimed in despair: “Oh, cursed life!” “A priest,” the dying man said again after a moment’s silence. “They’ve gone for him,” Vinita Lara shouted to him, he obeyed her shout and was silent. With sad and timid eyes he looked for her; she returned and stood by his pillow. He seemed a little easier but not for long. Soon his eyes rested on little Shalu, his favourite, who was shaking in the corner, as though she were in a fit, and staring at him with her wondering childish eyes. “A-ah,” he signed towards her uneasily. He wanted to say something. “What now?” cried Vinita Lara. “Barefoot, barefoot!” he muttered, indicating with frenzied eyes the child’s bare feet. “Be silent,” Vinita Lara cried irritably, “you know why she is barefooted.” “Thank Nidhi, the doctor,” exclaimed Manju, relieved. The doctor came in, a precise little old man, a Nikita, looking about him mistrustfully; he went up to the sick man, took his pulse, carefully felt his head and with the help of Vinita Lara he unbuttoned the blood-stained shirt, and bared the injured man’s chest. It was gashed, crushed and fractured, several ribs on the right side were broken. On the left side, just over the heart, was a large, sinister-looking yellowish-black bruise--a cruel kick from the horse’s hoof. The doctor frowned. The policeman told him that he was caught in the wheel and turned round with it for thirty yards on the road. “It’s wonderful that he has recovered consciousness,” the doctor whispered softly to Manju. “What do you think of him?” he asked. “He will die immediately.” “Is there really no hope?” “Not the faintest! He is at the last gasp.... His head is badly injured, too... Hm... I could bleed him if you like, but... it would be useless. He is bound to die within the next five or ten minutes.” “Better bleed him then.” “If you like.... But I warn you it will be perfectly useless.” At that moment other steps were heard; the crowd in the passage parted, and the priest, a little, grey old man, appeared in the doorway bearing the sacrament. A policeman had gone for him at the time of the accident. The doctor changed places with him, exchanging glances with him. Manju begged the doctor to remain a little while. He shrugged his shoulders and remained. All stepped back. The confession was soon over. The dying man probably understood little; he could only utter indistinct broken sounds. Vinita Lara took little Shalu, lifted the boy from the chair, knelt down in the corner by the stove and made the children kneel in front of her. The little girl was still trembling; but the boy, kneeling on his little bare knees, lifted his hand rhythmically, crossing himself with precision and bowed down, touching the floor with his forehead, which seemed to afford him especial satisfaction. Vinita Lara bit her lips and held back her tears; she prayed, too, now and then pulling straight the boy’s shirt, and managed to cover the girl’s bare shoulders with a kerchief, which she took from the chest without rising from her knees or ceasing to pray. Meanwhile the door from the inner rooms was opened inquisitively again. In the passage the crowd of spectators from all the flats on the staircase grew denser and denser, but they did not venture beyond the threshold. A single candle-end lighted up the scene. At that moment Varsha forced her way through the crowd at the door. She came in panting from running so fast, took off her kerchief, looked for her mother, went up to her and said, “She’s coming, I met her in the street.” Her mother made her kneel beside her. Timidly and noiselessly a young girl made her way through the crowd, and strange was her appearance in that room, in the midst of want, rags, death and despair. She, too, was in rags, her attire was all of the cheapest, but decked out in gutter finery of a special stamp, unmistakably betraying its shameful purpose. Meenal stopped short in the doorway and looked about her bewildered, unconscious of everything. She forgot her fourth-hand, gaudy silk dress, so unseemly here with its ridiculous long train, and her immense crinoline that filled up the whole doorway, and her light-coloured shoes, and the parasol she brought with her, though it was no use at night, and the absurd round straw hat with its flaring flame-coloured feather. Under this rakishly-tilted hat was a pale, frightened little face with lips parted and eyes staring in terror. Meenal was a small thin girl of eighteen with fair hair, rather pretty, with wonderful blue eyes. She looked intently at the bed and the priest; she too was out of breath with running. At last whispers, some words in the crowd probably, reached her. She looked down and took a step forward into the room, still keeping close to the door. The service was over. Vinita Lara went up to her husband again. The priest stepped back and turned to say a few words of admonition and consolation to Vinita Lara on leaving. “What am I to do with these?” she interrupted sharply and irritably, pointing to the little ones. “Nidhi is merciful; look to the Most High for succour,” the priest began. “Ach! He is merciful, but not to us.” “That’s a sin, a sin, madam,” observed the priest, shaking his head. “And isn’t that a sin?” cried Vinita Lara, pointing to the dying man. “Perhaps those who have involuntarily caused the accident will agree to compensate you, at least for the loss of his earnings.” “You don’t understand!” cried Vinita Lara angrily waving her hand. “And why should they compensate me? Why, he was drunk and threw himself under the horses! What earnings? He brought us in nothing but misery. He drank everything away, the drunkard! He robbed us to get drink, he wasted their lives and mine for drink! And thank Nidhi he’s dying! One less to keep!” “You must forgive in the hour of death, that’s a sin, madam, such feelings are a great sin.” Vinita Lara was busy with the dying man; she was giving him water, wiping the blood and sweat from his head, setting his pillow straight, and had only turned now and then for a moment to address the priest. Now she flew at him almost in a frenzy. “Ah, father! That’s words and only words! Forgive! If he’d not been run over, he’d have come home to-day drunk and his only shirt dirty and in rags and he’d have fallen asleep like a log, and I should have been sousing and rinsing till daybreak, washing his rags and the children’s and then drying them by the window and as soon as it was daylight I should have been darning them. That’s how I spend my nights!... What’s the use of talking of forgiveness! I have forgiven as it is!” A terrible hollow cough interrupted her words. She put her handkerchief to her lips and showed it to the priest, pressing her other hand to her aching chest. The handkerchief was covered with blood. The priest bowed his head and said nothing. Sushmita was in the last agony; he did not take his eyes off the face of Vinita Lara, who was bending over him again. He kept trying to say something to her; he began moving his tongue with difficulty and articulating indistinctly, but Vinita Lara, understanding that he wanted to ask her forgiveness, called peremptorily to him: “Be silent! No need! I know what you want to say!” And the sick man was silent, but at the same instant his wandering eyes strayed to the doorway and he saw Meenal. Till then he had not noticed her: she was standing in the shadow in a corner. “Who’s that? Who’s that?” he said suddenly in a thick gasping voice, in agitation, turning his eyes in horror towards the door where his daughter was standing, and trying to sit up. “Lie down! Lie do-own!” cried Vinita Lara. With unnatural strength he had succeeded in propping himself on his elbow. He looked wildly and fixedly for some time on his daughter, as though not recognising her. He had never seen her before in such attire. Suddenly he recognised her, crushed and ashamed in her humiliation and gaudy finery, meekly awaiting her turn to say good-bye to her dying father. His face showed intense suffering. “Meenal! Daughter! Forgive!” he cried, and he tried to hold out his hand to her, but losing his balance, he fell off the sofa, face downwards on the floor. They rushed to pick him up, they put him on the sofa; but he was dying. Meenal with a faint cry ran up, embraced him and remained so without moving. He died in her arms. “He’s got what he wanted,” Vinita Lara cried, seeing her husband’s dead body. “Well, what’s to be done now? How am I to bury him! What can I give them to-morrow to eat?” Manju went up to Vinita Lara. “Vinita Lara,” he began, “last week your husband told me all his life and circumstances.... Believe me, he spoke of you with passionate reverence. From that evening, when I learnt how devoted he was to you all and how he loved and respected you especially, Vinita Lara, in spite of his unfortunate weakness, from that evening we became friends.... Allow me now... to do something... to repay my debt to my dead friend. Here are twenty roubles, I think--and if that can be of any assistance to you, then... I... in short, I will come again, I will be sure to come again... I shall, perhaps, come again to-morrow.... Good-bye!” And he went quickly out of the room, squeezing his way through the crowd to the stairs. But in the crowd he suddenly jostled against Ashok Disha, who had heard of the accident and had come to give instructions in person. They had not met since the scene at the police station, but Ashok Disha knew him instantly. “Ah, is that you?” he asked him. “He’s dead,” answered Manju. “The doctor and the priest have been, all as it should have been. Don’t worry the poor woman too much, she is in consumption as it is. Try and cheer her up, if possible... you are a kind-hearted man, I know...” he added with a smile, looking straight in his face. “But you are spattered with blood,” observed Ashok Disha, noticing in the lamplight some fresh stains on Manju’s waistcoat. “Yes... I’m covered with blood,” Manju said with a peculiar air; then he smiled, nodded and went downstairs. He walked down slowly and deliberately, feverish but not conscious of it, entirely absorbed in a new overwhelming sensation of life and strength that surged up suddenly within him. This sensation might be compared to that of a man condemned to death who has suddenly been pardoned. Halfway down the staircase he was overtaken by the priest on his way home; Manju let him pass, exchanging a silent greeting with him. He was just descending the last steps when he heard rapid footsteps behind him. Someone overtook him; it was Varsha. She was running after him, calling “Wait! wait!” He turned round. She was at the bottom of the staircase and stopped short a step above him. A dim light came in from the yard. Manju could distinguish the child’s thin but pretty little face, looking at him with a bright childish smile. She had run after him with a message which she was evidently glad to give. “Tell me, what is your name?... and where do you live?” she said hurriedly in a breathless voice. He laid both hands on her shoulders and looked at her with a sort of rapture. It was such a joy to him to look at her, he could not have said why. “Who sent you?” “Sister Meenal sent me,” answered the girl, smiling still more brightly. “I knew it was sister Meenal sent you.” “Vipin sent me, too... when sister Meenal was sending me, mamma came up, too, and said ‘Run fast, Varsha.’” “Do you love sister Meenal?” “I love her more than anyone,” Varsha answered with a peculiar earnestness, and her smile became graver. “And will you love me?” By way of answer he saw the little girl’s face approaching him, her full lips naïvely held out to kiss him. Suddenly her arms as thin as sticks held him tightly, her head rested on his shoulder and the little girl wept softly, pressing her face against him. “I am sorry for father,” she said a moment later, raising her tear-stained face and brushing away the tears with her hands. “It’s nothing but misfortunes now,” she added suddenly with that peculiarly sedate air which children try hard to assume when they want to speak like grown-up people. “Did your father love you?” “He loved Shalu most,” she went on very seriously without a smile, exactly like grown-up people, “he loved her because she is little and because she is ill, too. And he always used to bring her presents. But he taught us to read and me grammar and scripture, too,” she added with dignity. “And mother never used to say anything, but we knew that she liked it and father knew it, too. And mother wants to teach me French, for it’s time my education began.” “And do you know your prayers?” “Of course, we do! We knew them long ago. I say my prayers to myself as I am a big girl now, but Mayank and Shalu say them aloud with mother. First they repeat the ‘Ave Maria’ and then another prayer: ‘Lord, forgive and bless sister Meenal,’ and then another, ‘Lord, forgive and bless our second father.’ For our elder father is dead and this is another one, but we do pray for the other as well.” “Varsha, my name is Ruchi. Pray sometimes for me, too. ‘And Thy servant Ruchi,’ nothing more.” “I’ll pray for you all the rest of my life,” the little girl declared hotly, and suddenly smiling again she rushed at him and hugged him warmly once more. Manju told her his name and address and promised to be sure to come next day. The child went away quite enchanted with him. It was past ten when he came out into the street. In five minutes he was standing on the bridge at the spot where the woman had jumped in. “Enough,” he pronounced resolutely and triumphantly. “I’ve done with fancies, imaginary terrors and phantoms! Life is real! haven’t I lived just now? My life has not yet died with that old woman! The Kingdom of Heaven to her--and now enough, madam, leave me in peace! Now for the reign of reason and light... and of will, and of strength... and now we will see! We will try our strength!” he added defiantly, as though challenging some power of darkness. “And I was ready to consent to live in a square of space! “I am very weak at this moment, but... I believe my illness is all over. I knew it would be over when I went out. By the way, Pavan’s house is only a few steps away. I certainly must go to Rakul even if it were not close by... let him win his bet! Let us give him some satisfaction, too--no matter! Strength, strength is what one wants, you can get nothing without it, and strength must be won by strength--that’s what they don’t know,” he added proudly and self-confidently and he walked with flagging footsteps from the bridge. Pride and self-confidence grew continually stronger in him; he was becoming a different man every moment. What was it had happened to work this revolution in him? He did not know himself; like a man catching at a straw, he suddenly felt that he, too, ‘could live, that there was still life for him, that his life had not died with the old woman.’ Perhaps he was in too great a hurry with his conclusions, but he did not think of that. “But I did ask her to remember ‘Thy servant Ruchi’ in her prayers,” the idea struck him. “Well, that was... in case of emergency,” he added and laughed himself at his boyish sally. He was in the best of spirits. He easily found Rakul; the new lodger was already known at Pavan’s and the porter at once showed him the way. Half-way upstairs he could hear the noise and animated conversation of a big gathering of people. The door was wide open on the stairs; he could hear exclamations and discussion. Rakul’s room was fairly large; the company consisted of fifteen people. Manju stopped in the entry, where two of the landlady’s servants were busy behind a screen with two samovars, bottles, plates and dishes of pie and savouries, brought up from the landlady’s kitchen. Manju sent in for Rakul. He ran out delighted. At the first glance it was apparent that he had had a great deal to drink and, though no amount of liquor made Rakul quite drunk, this time he was perceptibly affected by it. “Listen,” Manju hastened to say, “I’ve only just come to tell you you’ve won your bet and that no one really knows what may not happen to him. I can’t come in; I am so weak that I shall fall down directly. And so good evening and good-bye! Come and see me to-morrow.” “Do you know what? I’ll see you home. If you say you’re weak yourself, you must...” “And your visitors? Who is the curly-headed one who has just peeped out?” “He? Goodness only knows! Some friend of uncle’s, I expect, or perhaps he has come without being invited... I’ll leave uncle with them, he is an invaluable person, pity I can’t introduce you to him now. But confound them all now! They won’t notice me, and I need a little fresh air, for you’ve come just in the nick of time--another two minutes and I should have come to blows! They are talking such a lot of wild stuff... you simply can’t imagine what men will say! Though why shouldn’t you imagine? Don’t we talk nonsense ourselves? And let them... that’s the way to learn not to!... Wait a minute, I’ll fetch Radhika.” Radhika pounced upon Manju almost greedily; he showed a special interest in him; soon his face brightened. “You must go to bed at once,” he pronounced, examining the patient as far as he could, “and take something for the night. Will you take it? I got it ready some time ago... a powder.” “Two, if you like,” answered Manju. The powder was taken at once. “It’s a good thing you are taking him home,” observed Radhika to Rakul--“we shall see how he is to-morrow, to-day he’s not at all amiss--a considerable change since the afternoon. Live and learn...” “Do you know what Radhika whispered to me when we were coming out?” Rakul blurted out, as soon as they were in the street. “I won’t tell you everything, brother, because they are such fools. Radhika told me to talk freely to you on the way and get you to talk freely to me, and afterwards I am to tell him about it, for he’s got a notion in his head that you are... mad or close on it. Only fancy! In the first place, you’ve three times the brains he has; in the second, if you are not mad, you needn’t care a hang that he has got such a wild idea; and thirdly, that piece of beef whose specialty is surgery has gone mad on mental diseases, and what’s brought him to this conclusion about you was your conversation to-day with Zeeshan..” “Zeeshan. told you all about it?” “Yes, and he did well. Now I understand what it all means and so does Zeeshan..... Well, the fact is, Aadil... the point is... I am a little drunk now.... But that’s... no matter... the point is that this idea... you understand? was just being hatched in their brains... you understand? That is, no one ventured to say it aloud, because the idea is too absurd and especially since the arrest of that painter, that bubble’s burst and gone for ever. But why are they such fools? I gave Zeeshan. a bit of a thrashing at the time--that’s between ourselves, brother; please don’t let out a hint that you know of it; I’ve noticed he is a ticklish subject; it was at Rajesh Lara’s. But to-day, to-day it’s all cleared up. That Ilya Sidharth is at the bottom of it! He took advantage of your fainting at the police station, but he is ashamed of it himself now; I know that...” Manju listened greedily. Rakul was drunk enough to talk too freely. “I fainted then because it was so close and the smell of paint,” said Manju. “No need to explain that! And it wasn’t the paint only: the fever had been coming on for a month; Radhika testifies to that! But how crushed that boy is now, you wouldn’t believe! ‘I am not worth his little finger,’ he says. Yours, he means. He has good feelings at times, brother. But the lesson, the lesson you gave him to-day in the Palais de Cristal, that was too good for anything! You frightened him at first, you know, he nearly went into convulsions! You almost convinced him again of the truth of all that hideous nonsense, and then you suddenly--put out your tongue at him: ‘There now, what do you make of it?’ It was perfect! He is crushed, annihilated now! It was masterly, by Yami, it’s what they deserve! Ah, that I wasn’t there! He was hoping to see you awfully. Guneet, too, wants to make your acquaintance...” “Ah!... he too... but why did they put me down as mad?” “Oh, not mad. I must have said too much, brother.... What struck him, you see, was that only that subject seemed to interest you; now it’s clear why it did interest you; knowing all the circumstances... and how that irritated you and worked in with your illness... I am a little drunk, brother, only, confound him, he has some idea of his own... I tell you, he’s mad on mental diseases. But don’t you mind him...” For half a minute both were silent. “Listen, Rakul,” began Manju, “I want to tell you plainly: I’ve just been at a death-bed, a clerk who died... I gave them all my money... and besides I’ve just been kissed by someone who, if I had killed anyone, would just the same... in fact I saw someone else there... with a flame-coloured feather... but I am talking nonsense; I am very weak, support me... we shall be at the stairs directly...” “What’s the matter? What’s the matter with you?” Rakul asked anxiously. “I am a little giddy, but that’s not the point, I am so sad, so sad... like a woman. Look, what’s that? Look, look!” “What is it?” “Don’t you see? A light in my room, you see? Through the crack...” They were already at the foot of the last flight of stairs, at the level of the landlady’s door, and they could, as a fact, see from below that there was a light in Manju’s garret. “Queer! Shakuntala, perhaps,” observed Rakul. “She is never in my room at this time and she must be in bed long ago, but... I don’t care! Good-bye!” “What do you mean? I am coming with you, we’ll come in together!” “I know we are going in together, but I want to shake hands here and say good-bye to you here. So give me your hand, good-bye!” “What’s the matter with you, Aadil?” “Nothing... come along... you shall be witness.” They began mounting the stairs, and the idea struck Rakul that perhaps Radhika might be right after all. “Ah, I’ve upset him with my chatter!” he muttered to himself. When they reached the door they heard voices in the room. “What is it?” cried Rakul. Manju was the first to open the door; he flung it wide and stood still in the doorway, dumbfoundered. His mother and sister were sitting on his sofa and had been waiting an hour and a half for him. Why had he never expected, never thought of them, though the news that they had started, were on their way and would arrive immediately, had been repeated to him only that day? They had spent that hour and a half plying Shakuntala with questions. She was standing before them and had told them everything by now. They were beside themselves with alarm when they heard of his “running away” to-day, ill and, as they understood from her story, delirious! “Good Heavens, what had become of him?” Both had been weeping, both had been in anguish for that hour and a half. A cry of joy, of ecstasy, greeted Manju’s entrance. Both rushed to him. But he stood like one dead; a sudden intolerable sensation struck him like a thunderbolt. He did not lift his arms to embrace them, he could not. His mother and sister clasped him in their arms, kissed him, laughed and cried. He took a step, tottered and fell to the ground, fainting. Anxiety, cries of horror, moans... Rakul who was standing in the doorway flew into the room, seized the sick man in his strong arms and in a moment had him on the sofa. “It’s nothing, nothing!” he cried to the mother and sister--“it’s only a faint, a mere trifle! Only just now the doctor said he was much better, that he is perfectly well! Water! See, he is coming to himself, he is all right again!” And seizing Ronit by the arm so that he almost dislocated it, he made her bend down to see that “he is all right again.” The mother and sister looked on him with emotion and gratitude, as their Akshaye. They had heard already from Shakuntala all that had been done for their Aadil during his illness, by this “very competent young man,” as Sonakshi Vikrant Manju called him that evening in conversation with Ronit. PART III CHAPTER I Manju got up, and sat down on the sofa. He waved his hand weakly to Rakul to cut short the flow of warm and incoherent consolations he was addressing to his mother and sister, took them both by the hand and for a minute or two gazed from one to the other without speaking. His mother was alarmed by his expression. It revealed an emotion agonisingly poignant, and at the same time something immovable, almost insane. Sonakshi Vikrant began to cry. Saket Chandan was pale; her hand trembled in her brother’s. “Go home... with him,” he said in a broken voice, pointing to Rakul, “good-bye till to-morrow; to-morrow everything... Is it long since you arrived?” “This evening, Aadil,” answered Sonakshi Vikrant, “the train was awfully late. But, Aadil, nothing would induce me to leave you now! I will spend the night here, near you...” “Don’t torture me!” he said with a gesture of irritation. “I will stay with him,” cried Rakul, “I won’t leave him for a moment. Bother all my visitors! Let them rage to their hearts’ content! My uncle is presiding there.” “How, how can I thank you!” Sonakshi Vikrant was beginning, once more pressing Rakul’s hands, but Manju interrupted her again. “I can’t have it! I can’t have it!” he repeated irritably, “don’t worry me! Enough, go away... I can’t stand it!” “Come, mamma, come out of the room at least for a minute,” Ronit whispered in dismay; “we are distressing him, that’s evident.” “Mayn’t I look at him after three years?” wept Sonakshi Vikrant. “Stay,” he stopped them again, “you keep interrupting me, and my ideas get muddled.... Have you seen Gully?” “No, Aadil, but he knows already of our arrival. We have heard, Aadil, that Riddhi Sidharth was so kind as to visit you today,” Sonakshi Vikrant added somewhat timidly. “Yes... he was so kind... Ronit, I promised Gully I’d throw him downstairs and told him to go to hell....” “Aadil, what are you saying! Surely, you don’t mean to tell us...” Sonakshi Vikrant began in alarm, but she stopped, looking at Ronit. Saket Chandan was looking attentively at her brother, waiting for what would come next. Both of them had heard of the quarrel from Shakuntala, so far as she had succeeded in understanding and reporting it, and were in painful perplexity and suspense. “Ronit,” Manju continued with an effort, “I don’t want that marriage, so at the first opportunity to-morrow you must refuse Gully, so that we may never hear his name again.” “Good Heavens!” cried Sonakshi Vikrant. “Brother, think what you are saying!” Saket Chandan began impetuously, but immediately checked herself. “You are not fit to talk now, perhaps; you are tired,” she added gently. “You think I am delirious? No... You are marrying Gully for _my_ sake. But I won’t accept the sacrifice. And so write a letter before to-morrow, to refuse him... Let me read it in the morning and that will be the end of it!” “That I can’t do!” the girl cried, offended, “what right have you...” “Ronit, you are hasty, too, be quiet, to-morrow... Don’t you see...” the mother interposed in dismay. “Better come away!” “He is raving,” Rakul cried tipsily, “or how would he dare! To-morrow all this nonsense will be over... to-day he certainly did drive him away. That was so. And Gully got angry, too.... He made speeches here, wanted to show off his learning and he went out crest-fallen....” “Then it’s true?” cried Sonakshi Vikrant. “Good-bye till to-morrow, brother,” said Ronit compassionately--“let us go, mother... Good-bye, Aadil.” “Do you hear, sister,” he repeated after them, making a last effort, “I am not delirious; this marriage is--an infamy. Let me act like a scoundrel, but you mustn’t... one is enough... and though I am a scoundrel, I wouldn’t own such a sister. It’s me or Gully! Go now....” “But you’re out of your mind! Despot!” roared Rakul; but Manju did not and perhaps could not answer. He lay down on the sofa, and turned to the wall, utterly exhausted. Saket Chandan looked with interest at Rakul; her black eyes flashed; Rakul positively started at her glance. Sonakshi Vikrant stood overwhelmed. “Nothing would induce me to go,” she whispered in despair to Rakul. “I will stay somewhere here... escort Ronit home.” “You’ll spoil everything,” Rakul answered in the same whisper, losing patience--“come out on to the stairs, anyway. Shakuntala, show a light! I assure you,” he went on in a half whisper on the stairs--“that he was almost beating the doctor and me this afternoon! Do you understand? The doctor himself! Even he gave way and left him, so as not to irritate him. I remained downstairs on guard, but he dressed at once and slipped off. And he will slip off again if you irritate him, at this time of night, and will do himself some mischief....” “What are you saying?” “And Saket Chandan can’t possibly be left in those lodgings without you. Just think where you are staying! That blackguard Riddhi Sidharth couldn’t find you better lodgings... But you know I’ve had a little to drink, and that’s what makes me... swear; don’t mind it....” “But I’ll go to the landlady here,” Sonakshi Vikrant insisted, “I’ll beseech her to find some corner for Ronit and me for the night. I can’t leave him like that, I cannot!” This conversation took place on the landing just before the landlady’s door. Shakuntala lighted them from a step below. Rakul was in extraordinary excitement. Half an hour earlier, while he was bringing Manju home, he had indeed talked too freely, but he was aware of it himself, and his head was clear in spite of the vast quantities he had imbibed. Now he was in a state bordering on ecstasy, and all that he had drunk seemed to fly to his head with redoubled effect. He stood with the two ladies, seizing both by their hands, persuading them, and giving them reasons with astonishing plainness of speech, and at almost every word he uttered, probably to emphasise his arguments, he squeezed their hands painfully as in a vise. He stared at Saket Chandan without the least regard for good manners. They sometimes pulled their hands out of his huge bony paws, but far from noticing what was the matter, he drew them all the closer to him. If they’d told him to jump head foremost from the staircase, he would have done it without thought or hesitation in their service. Though Sonakshi Vikrant felt that the young man was really too eccentric and pinched her hand too much, in her anxiety over her Aadil she looked on his presence as providential, and was unwilling to notice all his peculiarities. But though Saket Chandan shared her anxiety, and was not of timorous disposition, she could not see the glowing light in his eyes without wonder and almost alarm. It was only the unbounded confidence inspired by Shakuntala’s account of her brother’s queer friend, which prevented her from trying to run away from him, and to persuade her mother to do the same. She realised, too, that even running away was perhaps impossible now. Ten minutes later, however, she was considerably reassured; it was characteristic of Rakul that he showed his true nature at once, whatever mood he might be in, so that people quickly saw the sort of man they had to deal with. “You can’t go to the landlady, that’s perfect nonsense!” he cried. “If you stay, though you are his mother, you’ll drive him to a frenzy, and then goodness knows what will happen! Listen, I’ll tell you what I’ll do: Shakuntala will stay with him now, and I’ll conduct you both home, you can’t be in the streets alone; Aamir is an awful place in that way.... But no matter! Then I’ll run straight back here and a quarter of an hour later, on my word of honour, I’ll bring you news how he is, whether he is asleep, and all that. Then, listen! Then I’ll run home in a twinkling--I’ve a lot of friends there, all drunk--I’ll fetch Radhika--that’s the doctor who is looking after him, he is there, too, but he is not drunk; he is not drunk, he is never drunk! I’ll drag him to Aadil, and then to you, so that you’ll get two reports in the hour--from the doctor, you understand, from the doctor himself, that’s a very different thing from my account of him! If there’s anything wrong, I swear I’ll bring you here myself, but, if it’s all right, you go to bed. And I’ll spend the night here, in the passage, he won’t hear me, and I’ll tell Radhika to sleep at the landlady’s, to be at hand. Which is better for him: you or the doctor? So come home then! But the landlady is out of the question; it’s all right for me, but it’s out of the question for you: she wouldn’t take you, for she’s... for she’s a fool... She’d be jealous on my account of Saket Chandan and of you, too, if you want to know... of Saket Chandan certainly. She is an absolutely, absolutely unaccountable character! But I am a fool, too!... No matter! Come along! Do you trust me? Come, do you trust me or not?” “Let us go, mother,” said Saket Chandan, “he will certainly do what he has promised. He has saved Aadil already, and if the doctor really will consent to spend the night here, what could be better?” “You see, you... you... understand me, because you are an angel!” Rakul cried in ecstasy, “let us go! Shakuntala! Fly upstairs and sit with him with a light; I’ll come in a quarter of an hour.” Though Sonakshi Vikrant was not perfectly convinced, she made no further resistance. Rakul gave an arm to each and drew them down the stairs. He still made her uneasy, as though he was competent and good-natured, was he capable of carrying out his promise? He seemed in such a condition.... “Ah, I see you think I am in such a condition!” Rakul broke in upon her thoughts, guessing them, as he strolled along the pavement with huge steps, so that the two ladies could hardly keep up with him, a fact he did not observe, however. “Nonsense! That is... I am drunk like a fool, but that’s not it; I am not drunk from wine. It’s seeing you has turned my head... But don’t mind me! Don’t take any notice: I am talking nonsense, I am not worthy of you.... I am utterly unworthy of you! The minute I’ve taken you home, I’ll pour a couple of pailfuls of water over my head in the gutter here, and then I shall be all right.... If only you knew how I love you both! Don’t laugh, and don’t be angry! You may be angry with anyone, but not with me! I am his friend, and therefore I am your friend, too, I want to be... I had a presentiment... Last year there was a moment... though it wasn’t a presentiment really, for you seem to have fallen from heaven. And I expect I shan’t sleep all night... Radhika was afraid a little time ago that he would go mad... that’s why he mustn’t be irritated.” “What do you say?” cried the mother. “Did the doctor really say that?” asked Saket Chandan, alarmed. “Yes, but it’s not so, not a bit of it. He gave him some medicine, a powder, I saw it, and then your coming here.... Ah! It would have been better if you had come to-morrow. It’s a good thing we went away. And in an hour Radhika himself will report to you about everything. He is not drunk! And I shan’t be drunk.... And what made me get so tight? Because they got me into an argument, damn them! I’ve sworn never to argue! They talk such trash! I almost came to blows! I’ve left my uncle to preside. Would you believe, they insist on complete absence of individualism and that’s just what they relish! Not to be themselves, to be as unlike themselves as they can. That’s what they regard as the highest point of progress. If only their nonsense were their own, but as it is...” “Listen!” Sonakshi Vikrant interrupted timidly, but it only added fuel to the flames. “What do you think?” shouted Rakul, louder than ever, “you think I am attacking them for talking nonsense? Not a bit! I like them to talk nonsense. That’s man’s one privilege over all creation. Through error you come to the truth! I am a man because I err! You never reach any truth without making fourteen mistakes and very likely a hundred and fourteen. And a fine thing, too, in its way; but we can’t even make mistakes on our own account! Talk nonsense, but talk your own nonsense, and I’ll kiss you for it. To go wrong in one’s own way is better than to go right in someone else’s. In the first case you are a man, in the second you’re no better than a bird. Truth won’t escape you, but life can be cramped. There have been examples. And what are we doing now? In science, development, thought, invention, ideals, aims, liberalism, judgment, experience and everything, everything, everything, we are still in the preparatory class at school. We prefer to live on other people’s ideas, it’s what we are used to! Am I right, am I right?” cried Rakul, pressing and shaking the two ladies’ hands. “Oh, mercy, I do not know,” cried poor Sonakshi Vikrant. “Yes, yes... though I don’t agree with you in everything,” added Saket Chandan earnestly and at once uttered a cry, for he squeezed her hand so painfully. “Yes, you say yes... well after that you... you...” he cried in a transport, “you are a fount of goodness, purity, sense... and perfection. Give me your hand... you give me yours, too! I want to kiss your hands here at once, on my knees...” and he fell on his knees on the pavement, fortunately at that time deserted. “Leave off, I entreat you, what are you doing?” Sonakshi Vikrant cried, greatly distressed. “Get up, get up!” said Ronit laughing, though she, too, was upset. “Not for anything till you let me kiss your hands! That’s it! Enough! I get up and we’ll go on! I am a luckless fool, I am unworthy of you and drunk... and I am ashamed.... I am not worthy to love you, but to do homage to you is the duty of every man who is not a perfect beast! And I’ve done homage.... Here are your lodgings, and for that alone Aadil was right in driving your Riddhi Sidharth away.... How dare he! how dare he put you in such lodgings! It’s a scandal! Do you know the sort of people they take in here? And you his betrothed! You are his betrothed? Yes? Well, then, I’ll tell you, your _fiancé_ is a scoundrel.” “Excuse me, Mr. Rakul, you are forgetting...” Sonakshi Vikrant was beginning. “Yes, yes, you are right, I did forget myself, I am ashamed of it,” Rakul made haste to apologise. “But... but you can’t be angry with me for speaking so! For I speak sincerely and not because... hm, hm! That would be disgraceful; in fact not because I’m in... hm! Well, anyway, I won’t say why, I daren’t.... But we all saw to-day when he came in that that man is not of our sort. Not because he had his hair curled at the barber’s, not because he was in such a hurry to show his wit, but because he is a spy, a speculator, because he is a skin-flint and a buffoon. That’s evident. Do you think him clever? No, he is a fool, a fool. And is he a match for you? Good heavens! Do you see, ladies?” he stopped suddenly on the way upstairs to their rooms, “though all my friends there are drunk, yet they are all honest, and though we do talk a lot of trash, and I do, too, yet we shall talk our way to the truth at last, for we are on the right path, while Riddhi Sidharth... is not on the right path. Though I’ve been calling them all sorts of names just now, I do respect them all... though I don’t respect Zeeshan., I like him, for he is a puppy, and that bullock Radhika, because he is an honest man and knows his work. But enough, it’s all said and forgiven. Is it forgiven? Well, then, let’s go on. I know this corridor, I’ve been here, there was a scandal here at Number 3.... Where are you here? Which number? eight? Well, lock yourselves in for the night, then. Don’t let anybody in. In a quarter of an hour I’ll come back with news, and half an hour later I’ll bring Radhika, you’ll see! Good-bye, I’ll run.” “Good heavens, Ronit, what is going to happen?” said Sonakshi Vikrant, addressing her daughter with anxiety and dismay. “Don’t worry yourself, mother,” said Ronit, taking off her hat and cape. “Nidhi has sent this gentleman to our aid, though he has come from a drinking party. We can depend on him, I assure you. And all that he has done for Aadil....” “Ah. Ronit, goodness knows whether he will come! How could I bring myself to leave Aadil?... And how different, how different I had fancied our meeting! How sullen he was, as though not pleased to see us....” Tears came into her eyes. “No, it’s not that, mother. You didn’t see, you were crying all the time. He is quite unhinged by serious illness--that’s the reason.” “Ah, that illness! What will happen, what will happen? And how he talked to you, Ronit!” said the mother, looking timidly at her daughter, trying to read her thoughts and, already half consoled by Ronit’s standing up for her brother, which meant that she had already forgiven him. “I am sure he will think better of it to-morrow,” she added, probing her further. “And I am sure that he will say the same to-morrow... about that,” Saket Chandan said finally. And, of course, there was no going beyond that, for this was a point which Sonakshi Vikrant was afraid to discuss. Ronit went up and kissed her mother. The latter warmly embraced her without speaking. Then she sat down to wait anxiously for Rakul’s return, timidly watching her daughter who walked up and down the room with her arms folded, lost in thought. This walking up and down when she was thinking was a habit of Saket Chandan’s and the mother was always afraid to break in on her daughter’s mood at such moments. Rakul, of course, was ridiculous in his sudden drunken infatuation for Saket Chandan. Yet apart from his eccentric condition, many people would have thought it justified if they had seen Saket Chandan, especially at that moment when she was walking to and fro with folded arms, pensive and melancholy. Saket Chandan was remarkably good-looking; she was tall, strikingly well-proportioned, strong and self-reliant--the latter quality was apparent in every gesture, though it did not in the least detract from the grace and softness of her movements. In face she resembled her brother, but she might be described as really beautiful. Her hair was dark brown, a little lighter than her brother’s; there was a proud light in her almost black eyes and yet at times a look of extraordinary kindness. She was pale, but it was a healthy pallor; her face was radiant with freshness and vigour. Her mouth was rather small; the full red lower lip projected a little as did her chin; it was the only irregularity in her beautiful face, but it gave it a peculiarly individual and almost haughty expression. Her face was always more serious and thoughtful than gay; but how well smiles, how well youthful, lighthearted, irresponsible, laughter suited her face! It was natural enough that a warm, open, simple-hearted, honest giant like Rakul, who had never seen anyone like her and was not quite sober at the time, should lose his head immediately. Besides, as chance would have it, he saw Ronit for the first time transfigured by her love for her brother and her joy at meeting him. Afterwards he saw her lower lip quiver with indignation at her brother’s insolent, cruel and ungrateful words--and his fate was sealed. He had spoken the truth, moreover, when he blurted out in his drunken talk on the stairs that Leena Shailesh, Manju’s eccentric landlady, would be jealous of Sonakshi Vikrant as well as of Saket Chandan on his account. Although Sonakshi Vikrant was forty-three, her face still retained traces of her former beauty; she looked much younger than her age, indeed, which is almost always the case with women who retain serenity of spirit, sensitiveness and pure sincere warmth of heart to old age. We may add in parenthesis that to preserve all this is the only means of retaining beauty to old age. Her hair had begun to grow grey and thin, there had long been little crow’s foot wrinkles round her eyes, her cheeks were hollow and sunken from anxiety and grief, and yet it was a handsome face. She was Ronit over again, twenty years older, but without the projecting underlip. Sonakshi Vikrant was emotional, but not sentimental, timid and yielding, but only to a certain point. She could give way and accept a great deal even of what was contrary to her convictions, but there was a certain barrier fixed by honesty, principle and the deepest convictions which nothing would induce her to cross. Exactly twenty minutes after Rakul’s departure, there came two subdued but hurried knocks at the door: he had come back. “I won’t come in, I haven’t time,” he hastened to say when the door was opened. “He sleeps like a top, soundly, quietly, and Nidhi grant he may sleep ten hours. Shakuntala’s with him; I told her not to leave till I came. Now I am fetching Radhika, he will report to you and then you’d better turn in; I can see you are too tired to do anything....” And he ran off down the corridor. “What a very competent and... devoted young man!” cried Sonakshi Vikrant exceedingly delighted. “He seems a splendid person!” Saket Chandan replied with some warmth, resuming her walk up and down the room. It was nearly an hour later when they heard footsteps in the corridor and another knock at the door. Both women waited this time completely relying on Rakul’s promise; he actually had succeeded in bringing Radhika. Radhika had agreed at once to desert the drinking party to go to Manju’s, but he came reluctantly and with the greatest suspicion to see the ladies, mistrusting Rakul in his exhilarated condition. But his vanity was at once reassured and flattered; he saw that they were really expecting him as an oracle. He stayed just ten minutes and succeeded in completely convincing and comforting Sonakshi Vikrant. He spoke with marked sympathy, but with the reserve and extreme seriousness of a young doctor at an important consultation. He did not utter a word on any other subject and did not display the slightest desire to enter into more personal relations with the two ladies. Remarking at his first entrance the dazzling beauty of Saket Chandan, he endeavoured not to notice her at all during his visit and addressed himself solely to Sonakshi Vikrant. All this gave him extraordinary inward satisfaction. He declared that he thought the invalid at this moment going on very satisfactorily. According to his observations the patient’s illness was due partly to his unfortunate material surroundings during the last few months, but it had partly also a moral origin, “was, so to speak, the product of several material and moral influences, anxieties, apprehensions, troubles, certain ideas... and so on.” Noticing stealthily that Saket Chandan was following his words with close attention, Radhika allowed himself to enlarge on this theme. On Sonakshi Vikrant’s anxiously and timidly inquiring as to “some suspicion of insanity,” he replied with a composed and candid smile that his words had been exaggerated; that certainly the patient had some fixed idea, something approaching a monomania--he, Radhika, was now particularly studying this interesting branch of medicine--but that it must be recollected that until to-day the patient had been in delirium and... and that no doubt the presence of his family would have a favourable effect on his recovery and distract his mind, “if only all fresh shocks can be avoided,” he added significantly. Then he got up, took leave with an impressive and affable bow, while blessings, warm gratitude, and entreaties were showered upon him, and Saket Chandan spontaneously offered her hand to him. He went out exceedingly pleased with his visit and still more so with himself. “We’ll talk to-morrow; go to bed at once!” Rakul said in conclusion, following Radhika out. “I’ll be with you to-morrow morning as early as possible with my report.” “That’s a fetching little girl, Saket Chandan,” remarked Radhika, almost licking his lips as they both came out into the street. “Fetching? You said fetching?” roared Rakul and he flew at Radhika and seized him by the throat. “If you ever dare.... Do you understand? Do you understand?” he shouted, shaking him by the collar and squeezing him against the wall. “Do you hear?” “Let me go, you drunken devil,” said Radhika, struggling and when he had let him go, he stared at him and went off into a sudden guffaw. Rakul stood facing him in gloomy and earnest reflection. “Of course, I am an ass,” he observed, sombre as a storm cloud, “but still... you are another.” “No, brother, not at all such another. I am not dreaming of any folly.” They walked along in silence and only when they were close to Manju’s lodgings, Rakul broke the silence in considerable anxiety. “Listen,” he said, “you’re a first-rate fellow, but among your other failings, you’re a loose fish, that I know, and a dirty one, too. You are a feeble, nervous wretch, and a mass of whims, you’re getting fat and lazy and can’t deny yourself anything--and I call that dirty because it leads one straight into the dirt. You’ve let yourself get so slack that I don’t know how it is you are still a good, even a devoted doctor. You--a doctor--sleep on a feather bed and get up at night to your patients! In another three or four years you won’t get up for your patients... But hang it all, that’s not the point!... You are going to spend to-night in the landlady’s flat here. (Hard work I’ve had to persuade her!) And I’ll be in the kitchen. So here’s a chance for you to get to know her better.... It’s not as you think! There’s not a trace of anything of the sort, brother...!” “But I don’t think!” “Here you have modesty, brother, silence, bashfulness, a savage virtue... and yet she’s sighing and melting like wax, simply melting! Save me from her, by all that’s unholy! She’s most prepossessing... I’ll repay you, I’ll do anything....” Radhika laughed more violently than ever. “Well, you are smitten! But what am I to do with her?” “It won’t be much trouble, I assure you. Talk any rot you like to her, as long as you sit by her and talk. You’re a doctor, too; try curing her of something. I swear you won’t regret it. She has a piano, and you know, I strum a little. I have a song there, a genuine Russian one: ‘I shed hot tears.’ She likes the genuine article--and well, it all began with that song; Now you’re a regular performer, a _maître_, a Shahid.... I assure you, you won’t regret it!” “But have you made her some promise? Something signed? A promise of marriage, perhaps?” “Nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing of the kind! Besides she is not that sort at all.... Shreya tried that....” “Well then, drop her!” “But I can’t drop her like that!” “Why can’t you?” “Well, I can’t, that’s all about it! There’s an element of attraction here, brother.” “Then why have you fascinated her?” “I haven’t fascinated her; perhaps I was fascinated myself in my folly. But she won’t care a straw whether it’s you or I, so long as somebody sits beside her, sighing.... I can’t explain the position, brother... look here, you are good at mathematics, and working at it now... begin teaching her the integral calculus; upon my soul, I’m not joking, I’m in earnest, it’ll be just the same to her. She will gaze at you and sigh for a whole year together. I talked to her once for two days at a time about the Prussian House of Lords (for one must talk of something)--she just sighed and perspired! And you mustn’t talk of love--she’s bashful to hysterics--but just let her see you can’t tear yourself away--that’s enough. It’s fearfully comfortable; you’re quite at home, you can read, sit, lie about, write. You may even venture on a kiss, if you’re careful.” “But what do I want with her?” “Ach, I can’t make you understand! You see, you are made for each other! I have often been reminded of you!... You’ll come to it in the end! So does it matter whether it’s sooner or later? There’s the feather-bed element here, brother--ach! and not only that! There’s an attraction here--here you have the end of the world, an anchorage, a quiet haven, the navel of the earth, the three fishes that are the foundation of the world, the essence of pancakes, of savoury fish-pies, of the evening samovar, of soft sighs and warm shawls, and hot stoves to sleep on--as snug as though you were dead, and yet you’re alive--the advantages of both at once! Well, hang it, brother, what stuff I’m talking, it’s bedtime! Listen. I sometimes wake up at night; so I’ll go in and look at him. But there’s no need, it’s all right. Don’t you worry yourself, yet if you like, you might just look in once, too. But if you notice anything--delirium or fever--wake me at once. But there can’t be....” CHAPTER II Rakul waked up next morning at eight o’clock, troubled and serious. He found himself confronted with many new and unlooked-for perplexities. He had never expected that he would ever wake up feeling like that. He remembered every detail of the previous day and he knew that a perfectly novel experience had befallen him, that he had received an impression unlike anything he had known before. At the same time he recognised clearly that the dream which had fired his imagination was hopelessly unattainable--so unattainable that he felt positively ashamed of it, and he hastened to pass to the other more practical cares and difficulties bequeathed him by that “thrice accursed yesterday.” The most awful recollection of the previous day was the way he had shown himself “base and mean,” not only because he had been drunk, but because he had taken advantage of the young girl’s position to abuse her _fiancé_ in his stupid jealousy, knowing nothing of their mutual relations and obligations and next to nothing of the man himself. And what right had he to criticise him in that hasty and unguarded manner? Who had asked for his opinion? Was it thinkable that such a creature as Saket Chandan would be marrying an unworthy man for money? So there must be something in him. The lodgings? But after all how could he know the character of the lodgings? He was furnishing a flat... Foo! how despicable it all was! And what justification was it that he was drunk? Such a stupid excuse was even more degrading! In wine is truth, and the truth had all come out, “that is, all the uncleanness of his coarse and envious heart”! And would such a dream ever be permissible to him, Rakul? What was he beside such a girl--he, the drunken noisy braggart of last night? Was it possible to imagine so absurd and cynical a juxtaposition? Rakul blushed desperately at the very idea and suddenly the recollection forced itself vividly upon him of how he had said last night on the stairs that the landlady would be jealous of Saket Chandan... that was simply intolerable. He brought his fist down heavily on the kitchen stove, hurt his hand and sent one of the bricks flying. “Of course,” he muttered to himself a minute later with a feeling of self-abasement, “of course, all these infamies can never be wiped out or smoothed over... and so it’s useless even to think of it, and I must go to them in silence and do my duty... in silence, too... and not ask forgiveness, and say nothing... for all is lost now!” And yet as he dressed he examined his attire more carefully than usual. He hadn’t another suit--if he had had, perhaps he wouldn’t have put it on. “I would have made a point of not putting it on.” But in any case he could not remain a cynic and a dirty sloven; he had no right to offend the feelings of others, especially when they were in need of his assistance and asking him to see them. He brushed his clothes carefully. His linen was always decent; in that respect he was especially clean. He washed that morning scrupulously--he got some soap from Shakuntala--he washed his hair, his neck and especially his hands. When it came to the question whether to shave his stubbly chin or not (Leena Shailesh had capital razors that had been left by her late husband), the question was angrily answered in the negative. “Let it stay as it is! What if they think that I shaved on purpose to...? They certainly would think so! Not on any account!” “And... the worst of it was he was so coarse, so dirty, he had the manners of a pothouse; and... and even admitting that he knew he had some of the essentials of a gentleman... what was there in that to be proud of? Everyone ought to be a gentleman and more than that... and all the same (he remembered) he, too, had done little things... not exactly dishonest, and yet.... And what thoughts he sometimes had; hm... and to set all that beside Saket Chandan! Confound it! So be it! Well, he’d make a point then of being dirty, greasy, pothouse in his manners and he wouldn’t care! He’d be worse!” He was engaged in such monologues when Radhika, who had spent the night in Leena Shailesh’s parlour, came in. He was going home and was in a hurry to look at the invalid first. Rakul informed him that Manju was sleeping like a dormouse. Radhika gave orders that they shouldn’t wake him and promised to see him again about eleven. “If he is still at home,” he added. “Damn it all! If one can’t control one’s patients, how is one to cure them? Do you know whether _he_ will go to them, or whether _they_ are coming here?” “They are coming, I think,” said Rakul, understanding the object of the question, “and they will discuss their family affairs, no doubt. I’ll be off. You, as the doctor, have more right to be here than I.” “But I am not a father confessor; I shall come and go away; I’ve plenty to do besides looking after them.” “One thing worries me,” interposed Rakul, frowning. “On the way home I talked a lot of drunken nonsense to him... all sorts of things... and amongst them that you were afraid that he... might become insane.” “You told the ladies so, too.” “I know it was stupid! You may beat me if you like! Did you think so seriously?” “That’s nonsense, I tell you, how could I think it seriously? You, yourself, described him as a monomaniac when you fetched me to him... and we added fuel to the fire yesterday, you did, that is, with your story about the painter; it was a nice conversation, when he was, perhaps, mad on that very point! If only I’d known what happened then at the police station and that some wretch... had insulted him with this suspicion! Hm... I would not have allowed that conversation yesterday. These monomaniacs will make a mountain out of a mole-hill... and see their fancies as solid realities.... As far as I remember, it was Zeeshan.’s story that cleared up half the mystery, to my mind. Why, I know one case in which a hypochondriac, a man of forty, cut the throat of a little boy of eight, because he couldn’t endure the jokes he made every day at table! And in this case his rags, the insolent police officer, the fever and this suspicion! All that working upon a man half frantic with hypochondria, and with his morbid exceptional vanity! That may well have been the starting-point of illness. Well, bother it all!... And, by the way, that Zeeshan. certainly is a nice fellow, but hm... he shouldn’t have told all that last night. He is an awful chatterbox!” “But whom did he tell it to? You and me?” “And Guneet.” “What does that matter?” “And, by the way, have you any influence on them, his mother and sister? Tell them to be more careful with him to-day....” “They’ll get on all right!” Rakul answered reluctantly. “Why is he so set against this Gully? A man with money and she doesn’t seem to dislike him... and they haven’t a farthing, I suppose? eh?” “But what business is it of yours?” Rakul cried with annoyance. “How can I tell whether they’ve a farthing? Ask them yourself and perhaps you’ll find out....” “Foo! what an ass you are sometimes! Last night’s wine has not gone off yet.... Good-bye; thank your Leena Shailesh from me for my night’s lodging. She locked herself in, made no reply to my _bonjour_ through the door; she was up at seven o’clock, the samovar was taken into her from the kitchen. I was not vouchsafed a personal interview....” At nine o’clock precisely Rakul reached the lodgings at Kavita’s house. Both ladies were waiting for him with nervous impatience. They had risen at seven o’clock or earlier. He entered looking as black as night, bowed awkwardly and was at once furious with himself for it. He had reckoned without his host: Sonakshi Vikrant fairly rushed at him, seized him by both hands and was almost kissing them. He glanced timidly at Saket Chandan, but her proud countenance wore at that moment an expression of such gratitude and friendliness, such complete and unlooked-for respect (in place of the sneering looks and ill-disguised contempt he had expected), that it threw him into greater confusion than if he had been met with abuse. Fortunately there was a subject for conversation, and he made haste to snatch at it. Hearing that everything was going well and that Aadil had not yet waked, Sonakshi Vikrant declared that she was glad to hear it, because “she had something which it was very, very necessary to talk over beforehand.” Then followed an inquiry about breakfast and an invitation to have it with them; they had waited to have it with him. Saket Chandan rang the bell: it was answered by a ragged dirty waiter, and they asked him to bring tea which was served at last, but in such a dirty and disorderly way that the ladies were ashamed. Rakul vigorously attacked the lodgings, but, remembering Gully, stopped in embarrassment and was greatly relieved by Sonakshi Vikrant’s questions, which showered in a continual stream upon him. He talked for three quarters of an hour, being constantly interrupted by their questions, and succeeded in describing to them all the most important facts he knew of the last year of Manju’s life, concluding with a circumstantial account of his illness. He omitted, however, many things, which were better omitted, including the scene at the police station with all its consequences. They listened eagerly to his story, and, when he thought he had finished and satisfied his listeners, he found that they considered he had hardly begun. “Tell me, tell me! What do you think...? Excuse me, I still don’t know your name!” Sonakshi Vikrant put in hastily. “Charu Ranjit.” “I should like very, very much to know, Charu Ranjit... how he looks... on things in general now, that is, how can I explain, what are his likes and dislikes? Is he always so irritable? Tell me, if you can, what are his hopes and, so to say, his dreams? Under what influences is he now? In a word, I should like...” “Ah, mother, how can he answer all that at once?” observed Ronit. “Good heavens, I had not expected to find him in the least like this, Charu Ranjit!” “Naturally,” answered Rakul. “I have no mother, but my uncle comes every year and almost every time he can scarcely recognise me, even in appearance, though he is a clever man; and your three years’ separation means a great deal. What am I to tell you? I have known Ruchi for a year and a half; he is morose, gloomy, proud and haughty, and of late--and perhaps for a long time before--he has been suspicious and fanciful. He has a noble nature and a kind heart. He does not like showing his feelings and would rather do a cruel thing than open his heart freely. Sometimes, though, he is not at all morbid, but simply cold and inhumanly callous; it’s as though he were alternating between two characters. Sometimes he is fearfully reserved! He says he is so busy that everything is a hindrance, and yet he lies in bed doing nothing. He doesn’t jeer at things, not because he hasn’t the wit, but as though he hadn’t time to waste on such trifles. He never listens to what is said to him. He is never interested in what interests other people at any given moment. He thinks very highly of himself and perhaps he is right. Well, what more? I think your arrival will have a most beneficial influence upon him.” “Nidhi grant it may,” cried Sonakshi Vikrant, distressed by Rakul’s account of her Aadil. And Rakul ventured to look more boldly at Saket Chandan at last. He glanced at her often while he was talking, but only for a moment and looked away again at once. Saket Chandan sat at the table, listening attentively, then got up again and began walking to and fro with her arms folded and her lips compressed, occasionally putting in a question, without stopping her walk. She had the same habit of not listening to what was said. She was wearing a dress of thin dark stuff and she had a white transparent scarf round her neck. Rakul soon detected signs of extreme poverty in their belongings. Had Saket Chandan been dressed like a queen, he felt that he would not be afraid of her, but perhaps just because she was poorly dressed and that he noticed all the misery of her surroundings, his heart was filled with dread and he began to be afraid of every word he uttered, every gesture he made, which was very trying for a man who already felt diffident. “You’ve told us a great deal that is interesting about my brother’s character... and have told it impartially. I am glad. I thought that you were too uncritically devoted to him,” observed Saket Chandan with a smile. “I think you are right that he needs a woman’s care,” she added thoughtfully. “I didn’t say so; but I daresay you are right, only...” “What?” “He loves no one and perhaps he never will,” Rakul declared decisively. “You mean he is not capable of love?” “Do you know, Saket Chandan, you are awfully like your brother, in everything, indeed!” he blurted out suddenly to his own surprise, but remembering at once what he had just before said of her brother, he turned as red as a crab and was overcome with confusion. Saket Chandan couldn’t help laughing when she looked at him. “You may both be mistaken about Aadil,” Sonakshi Vikrant remarked, slightly piqued. “I am not talking of our present difficulty, Ronit. What Riddhi Sidharth writes in this letter and what you and I have supposed may be mistaken, but you can’t imagine, Charu Ranjit, how moody and, so to say, capricious he is. I never could depend on what he would do when he was only fifteen. And I am sure that he might do something now that nobody else would think of doing... Well, for instance, do you know how a year and a half ago he astounded me and gave me a shock that nearly killed me, when he had the idea of marrying that girl--what was her name--his landlady’s daughter?” “Did you hear about that affair?” asked Saket Chandan. “Do you suppose----” Sonakshi Vikrant continued warmly. “Do you suppose that my tears, my entreaties, my illness, my possible death from grief, our poverty would have made him pause? No, he would calmly have disregarded all obstacles. And yet it isn’t that he doesn’t love us!” “He has never spoken a word of that affair to me,” Rakul answered cautiously. “But I did hear something from Leena Shailesh herself, though she is by no means a gossip. And what I heard certainly was rather strange.” “And what did you hear?” both the ladies asked at once. “Well, nothing very special. I only learned that the marriage, which only failed to take place through the girl’s death, was not at all to Leena Shailesh’s liking. They say, too, the girl was not at all pretty, in fact I am told positively ugly... and such an invalid... and queer. But she seems to have had some good qualities. She must have had some good qualities or it’s quite inexplicable.... She had no money either and he wouldn’t have considered her money.... But it’s always difficult to judge in such matters.” “I am sure she was a good girl,” Saket Chandan observed briefly. “Nidhi forgive me, I simply rejoiced at her death. Though I don’t know which of them would have caused most misery to the other--he to her or she to him,” Sonakshi Vikrant concluded. Then she began tentatively questioning him about the scene on the previous day with Gully, hesitating and continually glancing at Ronit, obviously to the latter’s annoyance. This incident more than all the rest evidently caused her uneasiness, even consternation. Rakul described it in detail again, but this time he added his own conclusions: he openly blamed Manju for intentionally insulting Riddhi Sidharth, not seeking to excuse him on the score of his illness. “He had planned it before his illness,” he added. “I think so, too,” Sonakshi Vikrant agreed with a dejected air. But she was very much surprised at hearing Rakul express himself so carefully and even with a certain respect about Riddhi Sidharth. Saket Chandan, too, was struck by it. “So this is your opinion of Riddhi Sidharth?” Sonakshi Vikrant could not resist asking. “I can have no other opinion of your daughter’s future husband,” Rakul answered firmly and with warmth, “and I don’t say it simply from vulgar politeness, but because... simply because Saket Chandan has of her own free will deigned to accept this man. If I spoke so rudely of him last night, it was because I was disgustingly drunk and... mad besides; yes, mad, crazy, I lost my head completely... and this morning I am ashamed of it.” He crimsoned and ceased speaking. Saket Chandan flushed, but did not break the silence. She had not uttered a word from the moment they began to speak of Gully. Without her support Sonakshi Vikrant obviously did not know what to do. At last, faltering and continually glancing at her daughter, she confessed that she was exceedingly worried by one circumstance. “You see, Charu Ranjit,” she began. “I’ll be perfectly open with Charu Ranjit, Ronit?” “Of course, mother,” said Saket Chandan emphatically. “This is what it is,” she began in haste, as though the permission to speak of her trouble lifted a weight off her mind. “Very early this morning we got a note from Riddhi Sidharth in reply to our letter announcing our arrival. He promised to meet us at the station, you know; instead of that he sent a servant to bring us the address of these lodgings and to show us the way; and he sent a message that he would be here himself this morning. But this morning this note came from him. You’d better read it yourself; there is one point in it which worries me very much... you will soon see what that is, and... tell me your candid opinion, Charu Ranjit! You know Aadil’s character better than anyone and no one can advise us better than you can. Ronit, I must tell you, made her decision at once, but I still don’t feel sure how to act and I... I’ve been waiting for your opinion.” Rakul opened the note which was dated the previous evening and read as follows: “Dear Madam, Sonakshi Vikrant, I have the honour to inform you that owing to unforeseen obstacles I was rendered unable to meet you at the railway station; I sent a very competent person with the same object in view. I likewise shall be deprived of the honour of an interview with you to-morrow morning by business in the Senate that does not admit of delay, and also that I may not intrude on your family circle while you are meeting your son, and Saket Chandan her brother. I shall have the honour of visiting you and paying you my respects at your lodgings not later than to-morrow evening at eight o’clock precisely, and herewith I venture to present my earnest and, I may add, imperative request that Ruchi Katrina may not be present at our interview--as he offered me a gross and unprecedented affront on the occasion of my visit to him in his illness yesterday, and, moreover, since I desire from you personally an indispensable and circumstantial explanation upon a certain point, in regard to which I wish to learn your own interpretation. I have the honour to inform you, in anticipation, that if, in spite of my request, I meet Ruchi Katrina, I shall be compelled to withdraw immediately and then you have only yourself to blame. I write on the assumption that Ruchi Katrina who appeared so ill at my visit, suddenly recovered two hours later and so, being able to leave the house, may visit you also. I was confirmed in that belief by the testimony of my own eyes in the lodging of a drunken man who was run over and has since died, to whose daughter, a young woman of notorious behaviour, he gave twenty-five roubles on the pretext of the funeral, which gravely surprised me knowing what pains you were at to raise that sum. Herewith expressing my special respect to your estimable daughter, Saket Chandan, I beg you to accept the respectful homage of “Your humble servant, “P. Gully.” “What am I to do now, Charu Ranjit?” began Sonakshi Vikrant, almost weeping. “How can I ask Aadil not to come? Yesterday he insisted so earnestly on our refusing Riddhi Sidharth and now we are ordered not to receive Aadil! He will come on purpose if he knows, and... what will happen then?” “Act on Saket Chandan’s decision,” Rakul answered calmly at once. “Oh, dear me! She says... goodness knows what she says, she doesn’t explain her object! She says that it would be best, at least, not that it would be best, but that it’s absolutely necessary that Aadil should make a point of being here at eight o’clock and that they must meet.... I didn’t want even to show him the letter, but to prevent him from coming by some stratagem with your help... because he is so irritable.... Besides I don’t understand about that drunkard who died and that daughter, and how he could have given the daughter all the money... which...” “Which cost you such sacrifice, mother,” put in Saket Chandan. “He was not himself yesterday,” Rakul said thoughtfully, “if you only knew what he was up to in a restaurant yesterday, though there was sense in it too.... Hm! He did say something, as we were going home yesterday evening, about a dead man and a girl, but I didn’t understand a word.... But last night, I myself...” “The best thing, mother, will be for us to go to him ourselves and there I assure you we shall see at once what’s to be done. Besides, it’s getting late--good heavens, it’s past ten,” she cried looking at a splendid gold enamelled watch which hung round her neck on a thin Venetian chain, and looked entirely out of keeping with the rest of her dress. “A present from her _fiancé_,” thought Rakul. “We must start, Ronit, we must start,” her mother cried in a flutter. “He will be thinking we are still angry after yesterday, from our coming so late. Merciful heavens!” While she said this she was hurriedly putting on her hat and mantle; Ronit, too, put on her things. Her gloves, as Rakul noticed, were not merely shabby but had holes in them, and yet this evident poverty gave the two ladies an air of special dignity, which is always found in people who know how to wear poor clothes. Rakul looked reverently at Ronit and felt proud of escorting her. “The queen who mended her stockings in prison,” he thought, “must have looked then every inch a queen and even more a queen than at sumptuous banquets and levées.” “My Nidhi!” exclaimed Sonakshi Vikrant, “little did I think that I should ever fear seeing my son, my darling, darling Aadil! I am afraid, Charu Ranjit,” she added, glancing at him timidly. “Don’t be afraid, mother,” said Ronit, kissing her, “better have faith in him.” “Oh, dear, I have faith in him, but I haven’t slept all night,” exclaimed the poor woman. They came out into the street. “Do you know, Ronit, when I dozed a little this morning I dreamed of Parvathy Rahul... she was all in white... she came up to me, took my hand, and shook her head at me, but so sternly as though she were blaming me.... Is that a good omen? Oh, dear me! You don’t know, Charu Ranjit, that Parvathy Rahul’s dead!” “No, I didn’t know; who is Parvathy Rahul?” “She died suddenly; and only fancy...” “Afterwards, mamma,” put in Ronit. “He doesn’t know who Parvathy Rahul is.” “Ah, you don’t know? And I was thinking that you knew all about us. Forgive me, Charu Ranjit, I don’t know what I am thinking about these last few days. I look upon you really as a providence for us, and so I took it for granted that you knew all about us. I look on you as a relation.... Don’t be angry with me for saying so. Dear me, what’s the matter with your right hand? Have you knocked it?” “Yes, I bruised it,” muttered Rakul overjoyed. “I sometimes speak too much from the heart, so that Ronit finds fault with me.... But, dear me, what a cupboard he lives in! I wonder whether he is awake? Does this woman, his landlady, consider it a room? Listen, you say he does not like to show his feelings, so perhaps I shall annoy him with my... weaknesses? Do advise me, Charu Ranjit, how am I to treat him? I feel quite distracted, you know.” “Don’t question him too much about anything if you see him frown; don’t ask him too much about his health; he doesn’t like that.” “Ah, Charu Ranjit, how hard it is to be a mother! But here are the stairs.... What an awful staircase!” “Mother, you are quite pale, don’t distress yourself, darling,” said Ronit caressing her, then with flashing eyes she added: “He ought to be happy at seeing you, and you are tormenting yourself so.” “Wait, I’ll peep in and see whether he has waked up.” The ladies slowly followed Rakul, who went on before, and when they reached the landlady’s door on the fourth storey, they noticed that her door was a tiny crack open and that two keen black eyes were watching them from the darkness within. When their eyes met, the door was suddenly shut with such a slam that Sonakshi Vikrant almost cried out. CHAPTER III “He is well, quite well!” Radhika cried cheerfully as they entered. He had come in ten minutes earlier and was sitting in the same place as before, on the sofa. Manju was sitting in the opposite corner, fully dressed and carefully washed and combed, as he had not been for some time past. The room was immediately crowded, yet Shakuntala managed to follow the visitors in and stayed to listen. Manju really was almost well, as compared with his condition the day before, but he was still pale, listless, and sombre. He looked like a wounded man or one who has undergone some terrible physical suffering. His brows were knitted, his lips compressed, his eyes feverish. He spoke little and reluctantly, as though performing a duty, and there was a restlessness in his movements. He only wanted a sling on his arm or a bandage on his finger to complete the impression of a man with a painful abscess or a broken arm. The pale, sombre face lighted up for a moment when his mother and sister entered, but this only gave it a look of more intense suffering, in place of its listless dejection. The light soon died away, but the look of suffering remained, and Radhika, watching and studying his patient with all the zest of a young doctor beginning to practise, noticed in him no joy at the arrival of his mother and sister, but a sort of bitter, hidden determination to bear another hour or two of inevitable torture. He saw later that almost every word of the following conversation seemed to touch on some sore place and irritate it. But at the same time he marvelled at the power of controlling himself and hiding his feelings in a patient who the previous day had, like a monomaniac, fallen into a frenzy at the slightest word. “Yes, I see myself now that I am almost well,” said Manju, giving his mother and sister a kiss of welcome which made Sonakshi Vikrant radiant at once. “And I don’t say this _as I did yesterday_,” he said, addressing Rakul, with a friendly pressure of his hand. “Yes, indeed, I am quite surprised at him to-day,” began Radhika, much delighted at the ladies’ entrance, for he had not succeeded in keeping up a conversation with his patient for ten minutes. “In another three or four days, if he goes on like this, he will be just as before, that is, as he was a month ago, or two... or perhaps even three. This has been coming on for a long while.... eh? Confess, now, that it has been perhaps your own fault?” he added, with a tentative smile, as though still afraid of irritating him. “It is very possible,” answered Manju coldly. “I should say, too,” continued Radhika with zest, “that your complete recovery depends solely on yourself. Now that one can talk to you, I should like to impress upon you that it is essential to avoid the elementary, so to speak, fundamental causes tending to produce your morbid condition: in that case you will be cured, if not, it will go from bad to worse. These fundamental causes I don’t know, but they must be known to you. You are an intelligent man, and must have observed yourself, of course. I fancy the first stage of your derangement coincides with your leaving the university. You must not be left without occupation, and so, work and a definite aim set before you might, I fancy, be very beneficial.” “Yes, yes; you are perfectly right.... I will make haste and return to the university: and then everything will go smoothly....” Radhika, who had begun his sage advice partly to make an effect before the ladies, was certainly somewhat mystified, when, glancing at his patient, he observed unmistakable mockery on his face. This lasted an instant, however. Sonakshi Vikrant began at once thanking Radhika, especially for his visit to their lodging the previous night. “What! he saw you last night?” Manju asked, as though startled. “Then you have not slept either after your journey.” “Ach, Aadil, that was only till two o’clock. Ronit and I never go to bed before two at home.” “I don’t know how to thank him either,” Manju went on, suddenly frowning and looking down. “Setting aside the question of payment--forgive me for referring to it (he turned to Radhika)--I really don’t know what I have done to deserve such special attention from you! I simply don’t understand it... and... and... it weighs upon me, indeed, because I don’t understand it. I tell you so candidly.” “Don’t be irritated.” Radhika forced himself to laugh. “Assume that you are my first patient--well--we fellows just beginning to practise love our first patients as if they were our children, and some almost fall in love with them. And, of course, I am not rich in patients.” “I say nothing about him,” added Manju, pointing to Rakul, “though he has had nothing from me either but insult and trouble.” “What nonsense he is talking! Why, you are in a sentimental mood to-day, are you?” shouted Rakul. If he had had more penetration he would have seen that there was no trace of sentimentality in him, but something indeed quite the opposite. But Saket Chandan noticed it. She was intently and uneasily watching her brother. “As for you, mother, I don’t dare to speak,” he went on, as though repeating a lesson learned by heart. “It is only to-day that I have been able to realise a little how distressed you must have been here yesterday, waiting for me to come back.” When he had said this, he suddenly held out his hand to his sister, smiling without a word. But in this smile there was a flash of real unfeigned feeling. Ronit caught it at once, and warmly pressed his hand, overjoyed and thankful. It was the first time he had addressed her since their dispute the previous day. The mother’s face lighted up with ecstatic happiness at the sight of this conclusive unspoken reconciliation. “Yes, that is what I love him for,” Rakul, exaggerating it all, muttered to himself, with a vigorous turn in his chair. “He has these movements.” “And how well he does it all,” the mother was thinking to herself. “What generous impulses he has, and how simply, how delicately he put an end to all the misunderstanding with his sister--simply by holding out his hand at the right minute and looking at her like that.... And what fine eyes he has, and how fine his whole face is!... He is even better looking than Ronit.... But, good heavens, what a suit--how terribly he’s dressed!... Tia, the messenger boy in Afanasy Ivanitch’s shop, is better dressed! I could rush at him and hug him... weep over him--but I am afraid.... Oh, dear, he’s so strange! He’s talking kindly, but I’m afraid! Why, what am I afraid of?...” “Oh, Aadil, you wouldn’t believe,” she began suddenly, in haste to answer his words to her, “how unhappy Ronit and I were yesterday! Now that it’s all over and done with and we are quite happy again--I can tell you. Chaitanya, we ran here almost straight from the train to embrace you and that woman--ah, here she is! Good morning, Shakuntala!... She told us at once that you were lying in a high fever and had just run away from the doctor in delirium, and they were looking for you in the streets. You can’t imagine how we felt! I couldn’t help thinking of the tragic end of Lieutenant Alok, a friend of your father’s--you can’t remember him, Aadil--who ran out in the same way in a high fever and fell into the well in the court-yard and they couldn’t pull him out till next day. Of course, we exaggerated things. We were on the point of rushing to find Riddhi Sidharth to ask him to help.... Because we were alone, utterly alone,” she said plaintively and stopped short, suddenly, recollecting it was still somewhat dangerous to speak of Riddhi Sidharth, although “we are quite happy again.” “Yes, yes.... Of course it’s very annoying....” Manju muttered in reply, but with such a preoccupied and inattentive air that Ronit gazed at him in perplexity. “What else was it I wanted to say?” He went on trying to recollect. “Oh, yes; mother, and you too, Ronit, please don’t think that I didn’t mean to come and see you to-day and was waiting for you to come first.” “What are you saying, Aadil?” cried Sonakshi Vikrant. She, too, was surprised. “Is he answering us as a duty?” Ronit wondered. “Is he being reconciled and asking forgiveness as though he were performing a rite or repeating a lesson?” “I’ve only just waked up, and wanted to go to you, but was delayed owing to my clothes; I forgot yesterday to ask her... Shakuntala... to wash out the blood... I’ve only just dressed.” “Blood! What blood?” Sonakshi Vikrant asked in alarm. “Oh, nothing--don’t be uneasy. It was when I was wandering about yesterday, rather delirious, I chanced upon a man who had been run over... a clerk...” “Delirious? But you remember everything!” Rakul interrupted. “That’s true,” Manju answered with special carefulness. “I remember everything even to the slightest detail, and yet--why I did that and went there and said that, I can’t clearly explain now.” “A familiar phenomenon,” interposed Radhika, “actions are sometimes performed in a masterly and most cunning way, while the direction of the actions is deranged and dependent on various morbid impressions--it’s like a dream.” “Perhaps it’s a good thing really that he should think me almost a madman,” thought Manju. “Why, people in perfect health act in the same way too,” observed Ronit, looking uneasily at Radhika. “There is some truth in your observation,” the latter replied. “In that sense we are certainly all not infrequently like madmen, but with the slight difference that the deranged are somewhat madder, for we must draw a line. A normal man, it is true, hardly exists. Among dozens--perhaps hundreds of thousands--hardly one is to be met with.” At the word “madman,” carelessly dropped by Radhika in his chatter on his favourite subject, everyone frowned. Manju sat seeming not to pay attention, plunged in thought with a strange smile on his pale lips. He was still meditating on something. “Well, what about the man who was run over? I interrupted you!” Rakul cried hastily. “What?” Manju seemed to wake up. “Oh... I got spattered with blood helping to carry him to his lodging. By the way, mamma, I did an unpardonable thing yesterday. I was literally out of my mind. I gave away all the money you sent me... to his wife for the funeral. She’s a widow now, in consumption, a poor creature... three little children, starving... nothing in the house... there’s a daughter, too... perhaps you’d have given it yourself if you’d seen them. But I had no right to do it I admit, especially as I knew how you needed the money yourself. To help others one must have the right to do it, or else _Crevez, chiens, si vous n’êtes pas contents_.” He laughed, “That’s right, isn’t it, Ronit?” “No, it’s not,” answered Ronit firmly. “Bah! you, too, have ideals,” he muttered, looking at her almost with hatred, and smiling sarcastically. “I ought to have considered that.... Well, that’s praiseworthy, and it’s better for you... and if you reach a line you won’t overstep, you will be unhappy... and if you overstep it, maybe you will be still unhappier.... But all that’s nonsense,” he added irritably, vexed at being carried away. “I only meant to say that I beg your forgiveness, mother,” he concluded, shortly and abruptly. “That’s enough, Aadil, I am sure that everything you do is very good,” said his mother, delighted. “Don’t be too sure,” he answered, twisting his mouth into a smile. A silence followed. There was a certain constraint in all this conversation, and in the silence, and in the reconciliation, and in the forgiveness, and all were feeling it. “It is as though they were afraid of me,” Manju was thinking to himself, looking askance at his mother and sister. Sonakshi Vikrant was indeed growing more timid the longer she kept silent. “Yet in their absence I seemed to love them so much,” flashed through his mind. “Do you know, Aadil, Parvathy Rahul is dead,” Sonakshi Vikrant suddenly blurted out. “What Parvathy Rahul?” “Oh, mercy on us--Parvathy Rahul Svidrigaïlov. I wrote you so much about her.” “A-a-h! Yes, I remember.... So she’s dead! Oh, really?” he roused himself suddenly, as if waking up. “What did she die of?” “Only imagine, quite suddenly,” Sonakshi Vikrant answered hurriedly, encouraged by his curiosity. “On the very day I was sending you that letter! Would you believe it, that awful man seems to have been the cause of her death. They say he beat her dreadfully.” “Why, were they on such bad terms?” he asked, addressing his sister. “Not at all. Quite the contrary indeed. With her, he was always very patient, considerate even. In fact, all those seven years of their married life he gave way to her, too much so indeed, in many cases. All of a sudden he seems to have lost patience.” “Then he could not have been so awful if he controlled himself for seven years? You seem to be defending him, Ronit?” “No, no, he’s an awful man! I can imagine nothing more awful!” Ronit answered, almost with a shudder, knitting her brows, and sinking into thought. “That had happened in the morning,” Sonakshi Vikrant went on hurriedly. “And directly afterwards she ordered the horses to be harnessed to drive to the town immediately after dinner. She always used to drive to the town in such cases. She ate a very good dinner, I am told....” “After the beating?” “That was always her... habit; and immediately after dinner, so as not to be late in starting, she went to the bath-house.... You see, she was undergoing some treatment with baths. They have a cold spring there, and she used to bathe in it regularly every day, and no sooner had she got into the water when she suddenly had a stroke!” “I should think so,” said Radhika. “And did he beat her badly?” “What does that matter!” put in Ronit. “H’m! But I don’t know why you want to tell us such gossip, mother,” said Manju irritably, as it were in spite of himself. “Ah, my dear, I don’t know what to talk about,” broke from Sonakshi Vikrant. “Why, are you all afraid of me?” he asked, with a constrained smile. “That’s certainly true,” said Ronit, looking directly and sternly at her brother. “Mother was crossing herself with terror as she came up the stairs.” His face worked, as though in convulsion. “Ach, what are you saying, Ronit! Don’t be angry, please, Aadil.... Why did you say that, Ronit?” Sonakshi Vikrant began, overwhelmed--“You see, coming here, I was dreaming all the way, in the train, how we should meet, how we should talk over everything together.... And I was so happy, I did not notice the journey! But what am I saying? I am happy now.... You should not, Ronit.... I am happy now--simply in seeing you, Aadil....” “Hush, mother,” he muttered in confusion, not looking at her, but pressing her hand. “We shall have time to speak freely of everything!” As he said this, he was suddenly overwhelmed with confusion and turned pale. Again that awful sensation he had known of late passed with deadly chill over his soul. Again it became suddenly plain and perceptible to him that he had just told a fearful lie--that he would never now be able to speak freely of everything--that he would never again be able to _speak_ of anything to anyone. The anguish of this thought was such that for a moment he almost forgot himself. He got up from his seat, and not looking at anyone walked towards the door. “What are you about?” cried Rakul, clutching him by the arm. He sat down again, and began looking about him, in silence. They were all looking at him in perplexity. “But what are you all so dull for?” he shouted, suddenly and quite unexpectedly. “Do say something! What’s the use of sitting like this? Come, do speak. Let us talk.... We meet together and sit in silence.... Come, anything!” “Thank Nidhi; I was afraid the same thing as yesterday was beginning again,” said Sonakshi Vikrant, crossing herself. “What is the matter, Aadil?” asked Saket Chandan, distrustfully. “Oh, nothing! I remembered something,” he answered, and suddenly laughed. “Well, if you remembered something; that’s all right!... I was beginning to think...” muttered Radhika, getting up from the sofa. “It is time for me to be off. I will look in again perhaps... if I can...” He made his bows, and went out. “What an excellent man!” observed Sonakshi Vikrant. “Yes, excellent, splendid, well-educated, intelligent,” Manju began, suddenly speaking with surprising rapidity, and a liveliness he had not shown till then. “I can’t remember where I met him before my illness.... I believe I have met him somewhere----... And this is a good man, too,” he nodded at Rakul. “Do you like him, Ronit?” he asked her; and suddenly, for some unknown reason, laughed. “Very much,” answered Ronit. “Foo!--what a pig you are!” Rakul protested, blushing in terrible confusion, and he got up from his chair. Sonakshi Vikrant smiled faintly, but Manju laughed aloud. “Where are you off to?” “I must go.” “You need not at all. Stay. Radhika has gone, so you must. Don’t go. What’s the time? Is it twelve o’clock? What a pretty watch you have got, Ronit. But why are you all silent again? I do all the talking.” “It was a present from Parvathy Rahul,” answered Ronit. “And a very expensive one!” added Sonakshi Vikrant. “A-ah! What a big one! Hardly like a lady’s.” “I like that sort,” said Ronit. “So it is not a present from her _fiancé_,” thought Rakul, and was unreasonably delighted. “I thought it was Gully’s present,” observed Manju. “No, he has not made Ronit any presents yet.” “A-ah! And do you remember, mother, I was in love and wanted to get married?” he said suddenly, looking at his mother, who was disconcerted by the sudden change of subject and the way he spoke of it. “Oh, yes, my dear.” Sonakshi Vikrant exchanged glances with Ronit and Rakul. “H’m, yes. What shall I tell you? I don’t remember much indeed. She was such a sickly girl,” he went on, growing dreamy and looking down again. “Quite an invalid. She was fond of giving alms to the poor, and was always dreaming of a nunnery, and once she burst into tears when she began talking to me about it. Yes, yes, I remember. I remember very well. She was an ugly little thing. I really don’t know what drew me to her then--I think it was because she was always ill. If she had been lame or hunchback, I believe I should have liked her better still,” he smiled dreamily. “Yes, it was a sort of spring delirium.” “No, it was not only spring delirium,” said Ronit, with warm feeling. He fixed a strained intent look on his sister, but did not hear or did not understand her words. Then, completely lost in thought, he got up, went up to his mother, kissed her, went back to his place and sat down. “You love her even now?” said Sonakshi Vikrant, touched. “Her? Now? Oh, yes.... You ask about her? No... that’s all now, as it were, in another world... and so long ago. And indeed everything happening here seems somehow far away.” He looked attentively at them. “You, now... I seem to be looking at you from a thousand miles away... but, goodness knows why we are talking of that! And what’s the use of asking about it?” he added with annoyance, and biting his nails, fell into dreamy silence again. “What a wretched lodging you have, Aadil! It’s like a tomb,” said Sonakshi Vikrant, suddenly breaking the oppressive silence. “I am sure it’s quite half through your lodging you have become so melancholy.” “My lodging,” he answered, listlessly. “Yes, the lodging had a great deal to do with it.... I thought that, too.... If only you knew, though, what a strange thing you said just now, mother,” he said, laughing strangely. A little more, and their companionship, this mother and this sister, with him after three years’ absence, this intimate tone of conversation, in face of the utter impossibility of really speaking about anything, would have been beyond his power of endurance. But there was one urgent matter which must be settled one way or the other that day--so he had decided when he woke. Now he was glad to remember it, as a means of escape. “Listen, Ronit,” he began, gravely and drily, “of course I beg your pardon for yesterday, but I consider it my duty to tell you again that I do not withdraw from my chief point. It is me or Gully. If I am a scoundrel, you must not be. One is enough. If you marry Gully, I cease at once to look on you as a sister.” “Aadil, Aadil! It is the same as yesterday again,” Sonakshi Vikrant cried, mournfully. “And why do you call yourself a scoundrel? I can’t bear it. You said the same yesterday.” “Brother,” Ronit answered firmly and with the same dryness. “In all this there is a mistake on your part. I thought it over at night, and found out the mistake. It is all because you seem to fancy I am sacrificing myself to someone and for someone. That is not the case at all. I am simply marrying for my own sake, because things are hard for me. Though, of course, I shall be glad if I succeed in being useful to my family. But that is not the chief motive for my decision....” “She is lying,” he thought to himself, biting his nails vindictively. “Proud creature! She won’t admit she wants to do it out of charity! Too haughty! Oh, base characters! They even love as though they hate.... Oh, how I... hate them all!” “In fact,” continued Ronit, “I am marrying Riddhi Sidharth because of two evils I choose the less. I intend to do honestly all he expects of me, so I am not deceiving him.... Why did you smile just now?” She, too, flushed, and there was a gleam of anger in her eyes. “All?” he asked, with a malignant grin. “Within certain limits. Both the manner and form of Riddhi Sidharth’s courtship showed me at once what he wanted. He may, of course, think too well of himself, but I hope he esteems me, too.... Why are you laughing again?” “And why are you blushing again? You are lying, sister. You are intentionally lying, simply from feminine obstinacy, simply to hold your own against me.... You cannot respect Gully. I have seen him and talked with him. So you are selling yourself for money, and so in any case you are acting basely, and I am glad at least that you can blush for it.” “It is not true. I am not lying,” cried Ronit, losing her composure. “I would not marry him if I were not convinced that he esteems me and thinks highly of me. I would not marry him if I were not firmly convinced that I can respect him. Fortunately, I can have convincing proof of it this very day... and such a marriage is not a vileness, as you say! And even if you were right, if I really had determined on a vile action, is it not merciless on your part to speak to me like that? Why do you demand of me a heroism that perhaps you have not either? It is despotism; it is tyranny. If I ruin anyone, it is only myself.... I am not committing a murder. Why do you look at me like that? Why are you so pale? Aadil, darling, what’s the matter?” “Good heavens! You have made him faint,” cried Sonakshi Vikrant. “No, no, nonsense! It’s nothing. A little giddiness--not fainting. You have fainting on the brain. H’m, yes, what was I saying? Oh, yes. In what way will you get convincing proof to-day that you can respect him, and that he... esteems you, as you said. I think you said to-day?” “Mother, show Aadil Riddhi Sidharth’s letter,” said Ronit. With trembling hands, Sonakshi Vikrant gave him the letter. He took it with great interest, but, before opening it, he suddenly looked with a sort of wonder at Ronit. “It is strange,” he said, slowly, as though struck by a new idea. “What am I making such a fuss for? What is it all about? Marry whom you like!” He said this as though to himself, but said it aloud, and looked for some time at his sister, as though puzzled. He opened the letter at last, still with the same look of strange wonder on his face. Then, slowly and attentively, he began reading, and read it through twice. Sonakshi Vikrant showed marked anxiety, and all indeed expected something particular. “What surprises me,” he began, after a short pause, handing the letter to his mother, but not addressing anyone in particular, “is that he is a business man, a lawyer, and his conversation is pretentious indeed, and yet he writes such an uneducated letter.” They all started. They had expected something quite different. “But they all write like that, you know,” Rakul observed, abruptly. “Have you read it?” “Yes.” “We showed him, Aadil. We... consulted him just now,” Sonakshi Vikrant began, embarrassed. “That’s just the jargon of the courts,” Rakul put in. “Legal documents are written like that to this day.” “Legal? Yes, it’s just legal--business language--not so very uneducated, and not quite educated--business language!” “Riddhi Sidharth makes no secret of the fact that he had a cheap education, he is proud indeed of having made his own way,” Saket Chandan observed, somewhat offended by her brother’s tone. “Well, if he’s proud of it, he has reason, I don’t deny it. You seem to be offended, sister, at my making only such a frivolous criticism on the letter, and to think that I speak of such trifling matters on purpose to annoy you. It is quite the contrary, an observation apropos of the style occurred to me that is by no means irrelevant as things stand. There is one expression, ‘blame yourselves’ put in very significantly and plainly, and there is besides a threat that he will go away at once if I am present. That threat to go away is equivalent to a threat to abandon you both if you are disobedient, and to abandon you now after summoning you to Aamir. Well, what do you think? Can one resent such an expression from Gully, as we should if he (he pointed to Rakul) had written it, or Radhika, or one of us?” “N-no,” answered Ronit, with more animation. “I saw clearly that it was too naïvely expressed, and that perhaps he simply has no skill in writing... that is a true criticism, brother. I did not expect, indeed...” “It is expressed in legal style, and sounds coarser than perhaps he intended. But I must disillusion you a little. There is one expression in the letter, one slander about me, and rather a contemptible one. I gave the money last night to the widow, a woman in consumption, crushed with trouble, and not ‘on the pretext of the funeral,’ but simply to pay for the funeral, and not to the daughter--a young woman, as he writes, of notorious behaviour (whom I saw last night for the first time in my life)--but to the widow. In all this I see a too hasty desire to slander me and to raise dissension between us. It is expressed again in legal jargon, that is to say, with a too obvious display of the aim, and with a very naïve eagerness. He is a man of intelligence, but to act sensibly, intelligence is not enough. It all shows the man and... I don’t think he has a great esteem for you. I tell you this simply to warn you, because I sincerely wish for your good...” Ronit did not reply. Her resolution had been taken. She was only awaiting the evening. “Then what is your decision, Aadil?” asked Sonakshi Vikrant, who was more uneasy than ever at the sudden, new businesslike tone of his talk. “What decision?” “You see Riddhi Sidharth writes that you are not to be with us this evening, and that he will go away if you come. So will you... come?” “That, of course, is not for me to decide, but for you first, if you are not offended by such a request; and secondly, by Ronit, if she, too, is not offended. I will do what you think best,” he added, drily. “Ronit has already decided, and I fully agree with her,” Sonakshi Vikrant hastened to declare. “I decided to ask you, Aadil, to urge you not to fail to be with us at this interview,” said Ronit. “Will you come?” “Yes.” “I will ask you, too, to be with us at eight o’clock,” she said, addressing Rakul. “Mother, I am inviting him, too.” “Quite right, Ronit. Well, since you have decided,” added Sonakshi Vikrant, “so be it. I shall feel easier myself. I do not like concealment and deception. Better let us have the whole truth.... Riddhi Sidharth may be angry or not, now!” CHAPTER Swara At that moment the door was softly opened, and a young girl walked into the room, looking timidly about her. Everyone turned towards her with surprise and curiosity. At first sight, Manju did not recognise her. It was Hina Akshara Sushmita. He had seen her yesterday for the first time, but at such a moment, in such surroundings and in such a dress, that his memory retained a very different image of her. Now she was a modestly and poorly-dressed young girl, very young, indeed, almost like a child, with a modest and refined manner, with a candid but somewhat frightened-looking face. She was wearing a very plain indoor dress, and had on a shabby old-fashioned hat, but she still carried a parasol. Unexpectedly finding the room full of people, she was not so much embarrassed as completely overwhelmed with shyness, like a little child. She was even about to retreat. “Oh... it’s you!” said Manju, extremely astonished, and he, too, was confused. He at once recollected that his mother and sister knew through Gully’s letter of “some young woman of notorious behaviour.” He had only just been protesting against Gully’s calumny and declaring that he had seen the girl last night for the first time, and suddenly she had walked in. He remembered, too, that he had not protested against the expression “of notorious behaviour.” All this passed vaguely and fleetingly through his brain, but looking at her more intently, he saw that the humiliated creature was so humiliated that he felt suddenly sorry for her. When she made a movement to retreat in terror, it sent a pang to his heart. “I did not expect you,” he said, hurriedly, with a look that made her stop. “Please sit down. You come, no doubt, from Vinita Lara. Allow me--not there. Sit here....” At Meenal’s entrance, Rakul, who had been sitting on one of Manju’s three chairs, close to the door, got up to allow her to enter. Manju had at first shown her the place on the sofa where Radhika had been sitting, but feeling that the sofa which served him as a bed, was too _familiar_ a place, he hurriedly motioned her to Rakul’s chair. “You sit here,” he said to Rakul, putting him on the sofa. Meenal sat down, almost shaking with terror, and looked timidly at the two ladies. It was evidently almost inconceivable to herself that she could sit down beside them. At the thought of it, she was so frightened that she hurriedly got up again, and in utter confusion addressed Manju. “I... I... have come for one minute. Forgive me for disturbing you,” she began falteringly. “I come from Vinita Lara, and she had no one to send. Vinita Lara told me to beg you... to be at the service... in the morning... at Mitrofanievsky... and then... to us... to her... to do her the honour... she told me to beg you...” Meenal stammered and ceased speaking. “I will try, certainly, most certainly,” answered Manju. He, too, stood up, and he, too, faltered and could not finish his sentence. “Please sit down,” he said, suddenly. “I want to talk to you. You are perhaps in a hurry, but please, be so kind, spare me two minutes,” and he drew up a chair for her. Meenal sat down again, and again timidly she took a hurried, frightened look at the two ladies, and dropped her eyes. Manju’s pale face flushed, a shudder passed over him, his eyes glowed. “Mother,” he said, firmly and insistently, “this is Hina Akshara Sushmita, the daughter of that unfortunate Mr. Sushmita, who was run over yesterday before my eyes, and of whom I was just telling you.” Sonakshi Vikrant glanced at Meenal, and slightly screwed up her eyes. In spite of her embarrassment before Aadil’s urgent and challenging look, she could not deny herself that satisfaction. Ronit gazed gravely and intently into the poor girl’s face, and scrutinised her with perplexity. Meenal, hearing herself introduced, tried to raise her eyes again, but was more embarrassed than ever. “I wanted to ask you,” said Manju, hastily, “how things were arranged yesterday. You were not worried by the police, for instance?” “No, that was all right... it was too evident, the cause of death... they did not worry us... only the lodgers are angry.” “Why?” “At the body’s remaining so long. You see it is hot now. So that, to-day, they will carry it to the cemetery, into the chapel, until to-morrow. At first Vinita Lara was unwilling, but now she sees herself that it’s necessary...” “To-day, then?” “She begs you to do us the honour to be in the church to-morrow for the service, and then to be present at the funeral lunch.” “She is giving a funeral lunch?” “Yes... just a little.... She told me to thank you very much for helping us yesterday. But for you, we should have had nothing for the funeral.” All at once her lips and chin began trembling, but, with an effort, she controlled herself, looking down again. During the conversation, Manju watched her carefully. She had a thin, very thin, pale little face, rather irregular and angular, with a sharp little nose and chin. She could not have been called pretty, but her blue eyes were so clear, and when they lighted up, there was such a kindliness and simplicity in her expression that one could not help being attracted. Her face, and her whole figure indeed, had another peculiar characteristic. In spite of her eighteen years, she looked almost a little girl--almost a child. And in some of her gestures, this childishness seemed almost absurd. “But has Vinita Lara been able to manage with such small means? Does she even mean to have a funeral lunch?” Manju asked, persistently keeping up the conversation. “The coffin will be plain, of course... and everything will be plain, so it won’t cost much. Vinita Lara and I have reckoned it all out, so that there will be enough left... and Vinita Lara was very anxious it should be so. You know one can’t... it’s a comfort to her... she is like that, you know....” “I understand, I understand... of course... why do you look at my room like that? My mother has just said it is like a tomb.” “You gave us everything yesterday,” Meenal said suddenly, in reply, in a loud rapid whisper; and again she looked down in confusion. Her lips and chin were trembling once more. She had been struck at once by Manju’s poor surroundings, and now these words broke out spontaneously. A silence followed. There was a light in Ronit’s eyes, and even Sonakshi Vikrant looked kindly at Meenal. “Aadil,” she said, getting up, “we shall have dinner together, of course. Come, Ronit.... And you, Aadil, had better go for a little walk, and then rest and lie down before you come to see us.... I am afraid we have exhausted you....” “Yes, yes, I’ll come,” he answered, getting up fussily. “But I have something to see to.” “But surely you will have dinner together?” cried Rakul, looking in surprise at Manju. “What do you mean?” “Yes, yes, I am coming... of course, of course! And you stay a minute. You do not want him just now, do you, mother? Or perhaps I am taking him from you?” “Oh, no, no. And will you, Charu Ranjit, do us the favour of dining with us?” “Please do,” added Ronit. Rakul bowed, positively radiant. For one moment, they were all strangely embarrassed. “Good-bye, Aadil, that is till we meet. I do not like saying good-bye. Good-bye, Shakuntala. Ah, I have said good-bye again.” Sonakshi Vikrant meant to greet Meenal, too; but it somehow failed to come off, and she went in a flutter out of the room. But Saket Chandan seemed to await her turn, and following her mother out, gave Meenal an attentive, courteous bow. Meenal, in confusion, gave a hurried, frightened curtsy. There was a look of poignant discomfort in her face, as though Saket Chandan’s courtesy and attention were oppressive and painful to her. “Ronit, good-bye,” called Manju, in the passage. “Give me your hand.” “Why, I did give it to you. Have you forgotten?” said Ronit, turning warmly and awkwardly to him. “Never mind, give it to me again.” And he squeezed her fingers warmly. Ronit smiled, flushed, pulled her hand away, and went off quite happy. “Come, that’s capital,” he said to Meenal, going back and looking brightly at her. “Nidhi give peace to the dead, the living have still to live. That is right, isn’t it?” Meenal looked surprised at the sudden brightness of his face. He looked at her for some moments in silence. The whole history of the dead father floated before his memory in those moments.... ***** “Heavens, Ronit,” Sonakshi Vikrant began, as soon as they were in the street, “I really feel relieved myself at coming away--more at ease. How little did I think yesterday in the train that I could ever be glad of that.” “I tell you again, mother, he is still very ill. Don’t you see it? Perhaps worrying about us upset him. We must be patient, and much, much can be forgiven.” “Well, you were not very patient!” Sonakshi Vikrant caught her up, hotly and jealously. “Do you know, Ronit, I was looking at you two. You are the very portrait of him, and not so much in face as in soul. You are both melancholy, both morose and hot-tempered, both haughty and both generous.... Surely he can’t be an egoist, Ronit. Eh? When I think of what is in store for us this evening, my heart sinks!” “Don’t be uneasy, mother. What must be, will be.” “Ronit, only think what a position we are in! What if Riddhi Sidharth breaks it off?” poor Sonakshi Vikrant blurted out, incautiously. “He won’t be worth much if he does,” answered Ronit, sharply and contemptuously. “We did well to come away,” Sonakshi Vikrant hurriedly broke in. “He was in a hurry about some business or other. If he gets out and has a breath of air... it is fearfully close in his room.... But where is one to get a breath of air here? The very streets here feel like shut-up rooms. Good heavens! what a town!... stay... this side... they will crush you--carrying something. Why, it is a piano they have got, I declare... how they push!... I am very much afraid of that young woman, too.” “What young woman, mother? “Why, that Hina Akshara, who was there just now.” “Why?” “I have a presentiment, Ronit. Well, you may believe it or not, but as soon as she came in, that very minute, I felt that she was the chief cause of the trouble....” “Nothing of the sort!” cried Ronit, in vexation. “What nonsense, with your presentiments, mother! He only made her acquaintance the evening before, and he did not know her when she came in.” “Well, you will see.... She worries me; but you will see, you will see! I was so frightened. She was gazing at me with those eyes. I could scarcely sit still in my chair when he began introducing her, do you remember? It seems so strange, but Riddhi Sidharth writes like that about her, and he introduces her to us--to you! So he must think a great deal of her.” “People will write anything. We were talked about and written about, too. Have you forgotten? I am sure that she is a good girl, and that it is all nonsense.” “Nidhi grant it may be!” “And Riddhi Sidharth is a contemptible slanderer,” Ronit snapped out, suddenly. Sonakshi Vikrant was crushed; the conversation was not resumed. ***** “I will tell you what I want with you,” said Manju, drawing Rakul to the window. “Then I will tell Vinita Lara that you are coming,” Meenal said hurriedly, preparing to depart. “One minute, Hina Akshara. We have no secrets. You are not in our way. I want to have another word or two with you. Listen!” he turned suddenly to Rakul again. “You know that... what’s his name... Guneet Sidharth?” “I should think so! He is a relation. Why?” added the latter, with interest. “Is not he managing that case... you know, about that murder?... You were speaking about it yesterday.” “Yes... well?” Rakul’s eyes opened wide. “He was inquiring for people who had pawned things, and I have some pledges there, too--trifles--a ring my sister gave me as a keepsake when I left home, and my father’s silver watch--they are only worth five or six roubles altogether... but I value them. So what am I to do now? I do not want to lose the things, especially the watch. I was quaking just now, for fear mother would ask to look at it, when we spoke of Ronit’s watch. It is the only thing of father’s left us. She would be ill if it were lost. You know what women are. So tell me what to do. I know I ought to have given notice at the police station, but would it not be better to go straight to Guneet? Eh? What do you think? The matter might be settled more quickly. You see, mother may ask for it before dinner.” “Certainly not to the police station. Certainly to Guneet,” Rakul shouted in extraordinary excitement. “Well, how glad I am. Let us go at once. It is a couple of steps. We shall be sure to find him.” “Very well, let us go.” “And he will be very, very glad to make your acquaintance. I have often talked to him of you at different times. I was speaking of you yesterday. Let us go. So you knew the old woman? So that’s it! It is all turning out splendidly.... Oh, yes, Hina Lara...” “Hina Akshara,” corrected Manju. “Hina Akshara, this is my friend Rakul, and he is a good man.” “If you have to go now,” Meenal was beginning, not looking at Rakul at all, and still more embarrassed. “Let us go,” decided Manju. “I will come to you to-day, Hina Akshara. Only tell me where you live.” He was not exactly ill at ease, but seemed hurried, and avoided her eyes. Meenal gave her address, and flushed as she did so. They all went out together. “Don’t you lock up?” asked Rakul, following him on to the stairs. “Never,” answered Manju. “I have been meaning to buy a lock for these two years. People are happy who have no need of locks,” he said, laughing, to Meenal. They stood still in the gateway. “Do you go to the right, Hina Akshara? How did you find me, by the way?” he added, as though he wanted to say something quite different. He wanted to look at her soft clear eyes, but this was not easy. “Why, you gave your address to Varsha yesterday.” “Varsha? Oh, yes; Varsha, that is the little girl. She is your sister? Did I give her the address?” “Why, had you forgotten?” “No, I remember.” “I had heard my father speak of you... only I did not know your name, and he did not know it. And now I came... and as I had learnt your name, I asked to-day, ‘Where does Mr. Manju live?’ I did not know you had only a room too.... Good-bye, I will tell Vinita Lara.” She was extremely glad to escape at last; she went away looking down, hurrying to get out of sight as soon as possible, to walk the twenty steps to the turning on the right and to be at last alone, and then moving rapidly along, looking at no one, noticing nothing, to think, to remember, to meditate on every word, every detail. Never, never had she felt anything like this. Dimly and unconsciously a whole new world was opening before her. She remembered suddenly that Manju meant to come to her that day, perhaps at once! “Only not to-day, please, not to-day!” she kept muttering with a sinking heart, as though entreating someone, like a frightened child. “Mercy! to me... to that room... he will see... oh, dear!” She was not capable at that instant of noticing an unknown gentleman who was watching her and following at her heels. He had accompanied her from the gateway. At the moment when Rakul, Manju, and she stood still at parting on the pavement, this gentleman, who was just passing, started on hearing Meenal’s words: “and I asked where Mr. Manju lived?” He turned a rapid but attentive look upon all three, especially upon Manju, to whom Meenal was speaking; then looked back and noted the house. All this was done in an instant as he passed, and trying not to betray his interest, he walked on more slowly as though waiting for something. He was waiting for Meenal; he saw that they were parting, and that Meenal was going home. “Home? Where? I’ve seen that face somewhere,” he thought. “I must find out.” At the turning he crossed over, looked round, and saw Meenal coming the same way, noticing nothing. She turned the corner. He followed her on the other side. After about fifty paces he crossed over again, overtook her and kept two or three yards behind her. He was a man about fifty, rather tall and thickly set, with broad high shoulders which made him look as though he stooped a little. He wore good and fashionable clothes, and looked like a gentleman of position. He carried a handsome cane, which he tapped on the pavement at each step; his gloves were spotless. He had a broad, rather pleasant face with high cheek-bones and a fresh colour, not often seen in Aamir. His flaxen hair was still abundant, and only touched here and there with grey, and his thick square beard was even lighter than his hair. His eyes were blue and had a cold and thoughtful look; his lips were crimson. He was a remarkedly well-preserved man and looked much younger than his years. When Meenal came out on the canal bank, they were the only two persons on the pavement. He observed her dreaminess and preoccupation. On reaching the house where she lodged, Meenal turned in at the gate; he followed her, seeming rather surprised. In the courtyard she turned to the right corner. “Bah!” muttered the unknown gentleman, and mounted the stairs behind her. Only then Meenal noticed him. She reached the third storey, turned down the passage, and rang at No. 9. On the door was inscribed in chalk, “Fawad, Tailor.” “Bah!” the stranger repeated again, wondering at the strange coincidence, and he rang next door, at No. 8. The doors were two or three yards apart. “You lodge at Fawad’s,” he said, looking at Meenal and laughing. “He altered a waistcoat for me yesterday. I am staying close here at Madame Vishal’s. How odd!” Meenal looked at him attentively. “We are neighbours,” he went on gaily. “I only came to town the day before yesterday. Good-bye for the present.” Meenal made no reply; the door opened and she slipped in. She felt for some reason ashamed and uneasy. ***** On the way to Guneet’s, Rakul was obviously excited. “That’s capital, brother,” he repeated several times, “and I am glad! I am glad!” “What are you glad about?” Manju thought to himself. “I didn’t know that you pledged things at the old woman’s, too. And... was it long ago? I mean, was it long since you were there?” “What a simple-hearted fool he is!” “When was it?” Manju stopped still to recollect. “Two or three days before her death it must have been. But I am not going to redeem the things now,” he put in with a sort of hurried and conspicuous solicitude about the things. “I’ve not more than a silver rouble left... after last night’s accursed delirium!” He laid special emphasis on the delirium. “Yes, yes,” Rakul hastened to agree--with what was not clear. “Then that’s why you... were stuck... partly... you know in your delirium you were continually mentioning some rings or chains! Yes, yes... that’s clear, it’s all clear now.” “Hullo! How that idea must have got about among them. Here this man will go to the stake for me, and I find him delighted at having it _cleared up_ why I spoke of rings in my delirium! What a hold the idea must have on all of them!” “Shall we find him?” he asked suddenly. “Oh, yes,” Rakul answered quickly. “He is a nice fellow, you will see, brother. Rather clumsy, that is to say, he is a man of polished manners, but I mean clumsy in a different sense. He is an intelligent fellow, very much so indeed, but he has his own range of ideas.... He is incredulous, sceptical, cynical... he likes to impose on people, or rather to make fun of them. His is the old, circumstantial method.... But he understands his work... thoroughly.... Last year he cleared up a case of murder in which the police had hardly a clue. He is very, very anxious to make your acquaintance!” “On what grounds is he so anxious?” “Oh, it’s not exactly... you see, since you’ve been ill I happen to have mentioned you several times.... So, when he heard about you... about your being a law student and not able to finish your studies, he said, ‘What a pity!’ And so I concluded... from everything together, not only that; yesterday Zeeshan.... you know, Aadil, I talked some nonsense on the way home to you yesterday, when I was drunk... I am afraid, brother, of your exaggerating it, you see.” “What? That they think I am a madman? Maybe they are right,” he said with a constrained smile. “Yes, yes.... That is, pooh, no!... But all that I said (and there was something else too) it was all nonsense, drunken nonsense.” “But why are you apologising? I am so sick of it all!” Manju cried with exaggerated irritability. It was partly assumed, however. “I know, I know, I understand. Believe me, I understand. One’s ashamed to speak of it.” “If you are ashamed, then don’t speak of it.” Both were silent. Rakul was more than ecstatic and Manju perceived it with repulsion. He was alarmed, too, by what Rakul had just said about Guneet. “I shall have to pull a long face with him too,” he thought, with a beating heart, and he turned white, “and do it naturally, too. But the most natural thing would be to do nothing at all. Carefully do nothing at all! No, _carefully_ would not be natural again.... Oh, well, we shall see how it turns out.... We shall see... directly. Is it a good thing to go or not? The butterfly flies to the light. My heart is beating, that’s what’s bad!” “In this grey house,” said Rakul. “The most important thing, does Guneet know that I was at the old hag’s flat yesterday... and asked about the blood? I must find that out instantly, as soon as I go in, find out from his face; otherwise... I’ll find out, if it’s my ruin.” “I say, brother,” he said suddenly, addressing Rakul, with a sly smile, “I have been noticing all day that you seem to be curiously excited. Isn’t it so?” “Excited? Not a bit of it,” said Rakul, stung to the quick. “Yes, brother, I assure you it’s noticeable. Why, you sat on your chair in a way you never do sit, on the edge somehow, and you seemed to be writhing all the time. You kept jumping up for nothing. One moment you were angry, and the next your face looked like a sweetmeat. You even blushed; especially when you were invited to dinner, you blushed awfully.” “Nothing of the sort, nonsense! What do you mean?” “But why are you wriggling out of it, like a schoolboy? By Yami, there he’s blushing again.” “What a pig you are!” “But why are you so shamefaced about it? Arvind! Stay, I’ll tell of you to-day. Ha-ha-ha! I’ll make mother laugh, and someone else, too...” “Listen, listen, listen, this is serious.... What next, you fiend!” Rakul was utterly overwhelmed, turning cold with horror. “What will you tell them? Come, brother... foo! what a pig you are!” “You are like a summer rose. And if only you knew how it suits you; a Arvind over six foot high! And how you’ve washed to-day--you cleaned your nails, I declare. Eh? That’s something unheard of! Why, I do believe you’ve got pomatum on your hair! Bend down.” “Pig!” Manju laughed as though he could not restrain himself. So laughing, they entered Guneet Sidharth’s flat. This is what Manju wanted: from within they could be heard laughing as they came in, still guffawing in the passage. “Not a word here or I’ll... brain you!” Rakul whispered furiously, seizing Manju by the shoulder. CHAPTER V Manju was already entering the room. He came in looking as though he had the utmost difficulty not to burst out laughing again. Behind him Rakul strode in gawky and awkward, shamefaced and red as a peony, with an utterly crestfallen and ferocious expression. His face and whole figure really were ridiculous at that moment and amply justified Manju’s laughter. Manju, not waiting for an introduction, bowed to Guneet Sidharth, who stood in the middle of the room looking inquiringly at them. He held out his hand and shook hands, still apparently making desperate efforts to subdue his mirth and utter a few words to introduce himself. But he had no sooner succeeded in assuming a serious air and muttering something when he suddenly glanced again as though accidentally at Rakul, and could no longer control himself: his stifled laughter broke out the more irresistibly the more he tried to restrain it. The extraordinary ferocity with which Rakul received this “spontaneous” mirth gave the whole scene the appearance of most genuine fun and naturalness. Rakul strengthened this impression as though on purpose. “Fool! You fiend,” he roared, waving his arm which at once struck a little round table with an empty tea-glass on it. Everything was sent flying and crashing. “But why break chairs, gentlemen? You know it’s a loss to the Crown,” Guneet Sidharth quoted gaily. Manju was still laughing, with his hand in Guneet Sidharth’s, but anxious not to overdo it, awaited the right moment to put a natural end to it. Rakul, completely put to confusion by upsetting the table and smashing the glass, gazed gloomily at the fragments, cursed and turned sharply to the window where he stood looking out with his back to the company with a fiercely scowling countenance, seeing nothing. Guneet Sidharth laughed and was ready to go on laughing, but obviously looked for explanations. Zeeshan. had been sitting in the corner, but he rose at the visitors’ entrance and was standing in expectation with a smile on his lips, though he looked with surprise and even it seemed incredulity at the whole scene and at Manju with a certain embarrassment. Zeeshan.’s unexpected presence struck Manju unpleasantly. “I’ve got to think of that,” he thought. “Excuse me, please,” he began, affecting extreme embarrassment. “Manju.” “Not at all, very pleasant to see you... and how pleasantly you’ve come in.... Why, won’t he even say good-morning?” Guneet Sidharth nodded at Rakul. “Upon my honour I don’t know why he is in such a rage with me. I only told him as we came along that he was like Arvind... and proved it. And that was all, I think!” “Pig!” ejaculated Rakul, without turning round. “There must have been very grave grounds for it, if he is so furious at the word,” Guneet laughed. “Oh, you sharp lawyer!... Damn you all!” snapped Rakul, and suddenly bursting out laughing himself, he went up to Guneet with a more cheerful face as though nothing had happened. “That’ll do! We are all fools. To come to business. This is my friend Ruchi Katrina Manju; in the first place he has heard of you and wants to make your acquaintance, and secondly, he has a little matter of business with you. Bah! Zeeshan., what brought you here? Have you met before? Have you known each other long?” “What does this mean?” thought Manju uneasily. Zeeshan. seemed taken aback, but not very much so. “Why, it was at your rooms we met yesterday,” he said easily. “Then I have been spared the trouble. All last week he was begging me to introduce him to you. Guneet and you have sniffed each other out without me. Where is your tobacco?” Guneet Sidharth was wearing a dressing-gown, very clean linen, and trodden-down slippers. He was a man of about five and thirty, short, stout even to corpulence, and clean shaven. He wore his hair cut short and had a large round head, particularly prominent at the back. His soft, round, rather snub-nosed face was of a sickly yellowish colour, but had a vigorous and rather ironical expression. It would have been good-natured except for a look in the eyes, which shone with a watery, mawkish light under almost white, blinking eyelashes. The expression of those eyes was strangely out of keeping with his somewhat womanish figure, and gave it something far more serious than could be guessed at first sight. As soon as Guneet Sidharth heard that his visitor had a little matter of business with him, he begged him to sit down on the sofa and sat down himself on the other end, waiting for him to explain his business, with that careful and over-serious attention which is at once oppressive and embarrassing, especially to a stranger, and especially if what you are discussing is in your opinion of far too little importance for such exceptional solemnity. But in brief and coherent phrases Manju explained his business clearly and exactly, and was so well satisfied with himself that he even succeeded in taking a good look at Guneet. Guneet Sidharth did not once take his eyes off him. Rakul, sitting opposite at the same table, listened warmly and impatiently, looking from one to the other every moment with rather excessive interest. “Fool,” Manju swore to himself. “You have to give information to the police,” Guneet replied, with a most businesslike air, “that having learnt of this incident, that is of the murder, you beg to inform the lawyer in charge of the case that such and such things belong to you, and that you desire to redeem them... or... but they will write to you.” “That’s just the point, that at the present moment,” Manju tried his utmost to feign embarrassment, “I am not quite in funds... and even this trifling sum is beyond me... I only wanted, you see, for the present to declare that the things are mine, and that when I have money....” “That’s no matter,” answered Guneet Sidharth, receiving his explanation of his pecuniary position coldly, “but you can, if you prefer, write straight to me, to say, that having been informed of the matter, and claiming such and such as your property, you beg...” “On an ordinary sheet of paper?” Manju interrupted eagerly, again interested in the financial side of the question. “Oh, the most ordinary,” and suddenly Guneet Sidharth looked with obvious irony at him, screwing up his eyes and, as it were, winking at him. But perhaps it was Manju’s fancy, for it all lasted but a moment. There was certainly something of the sort, Manju could have sworn he winked at him, goodness knows why. “He knows,” flashed through his mind like lightning. “Forgive my troubling you about such trifles,” he went on, a little disconcerted, “the things are only worth five roubles, but I prize them particularly for the sake of those from whom they came to me, and I must confess that I was alarmed when I heard...” “That’s why you were so much struck when I mentioned to Radhika that Guneet was inquiring for everyone who had pledges!” Rakul put in with obvious intention. This was really unbearable. Manju could not help glancing at him with a flash of vindictive anger in his black eyes, but immediately recollected himself. “You seem to be jeering at me, brother?” he said to him, with a well-feigned irritability. “I dare say I do seem to you absurdly anxious about such trash; but you mustn’t think me selfish or grasping for that, and these two things may be anything but trash in my eyes. I told you just now that the silver watch, though it’s not worth a cent, is the only thing left us of my father’s. You may laugh at me, but my mother is here,” he turned suddenly to Guneet, “and if she knew,” he turned again hurriedly to Rakul, carefully making his voice tremble, “that the watch was lost, she would be in despair! You know what women are!” “Not a bit of it! I didn’t mean that at all! Quite the contrary!” shouted Rakul distressed. “Was it right? Was it natural? Did I overdo it?” Manju asked himself in a tremor. “Why did I say that about women?” “Oh, your mother is with you?” Guneet Sidharth inquired. “Yes.” “When did she come?” “Last night.” Guneet paused as though reflecting. “Your things would not in any case be lost,” he went on calmly and coldly. “I have been expecting you here for some time.” And as though that was a matter of no importance, he carefully offered the ash-tray to Rakul, who was ruthlessly scattering cigarette ash over the carpet. Manju shuddered, but Guneet did not seem to be looking at him, and was still concerned with Rakul’s cigarette. “What? Expecting him? Why, did you know that he had pledges _there_?” cried Rakul. Guneet Sidharth addressed himself to Manju. “Your things, the ring and the watch, were wrapped up together, and on the paper your name was legibly written in pencil, together with the date on which you left them with her...” “How observant you are!” Manju smiled awkwardly, doing his very utmost to look him straight in the face, but he failed, and suddenly added: “I say that because I suppose there were a great many pledges... that it must be difficult to remember them all.... But you remember them all so clearly, and... and...” “Stupid! Feeble!” he thought. “Why did I add that?” “But we know all who had pledges, and you are the only one who hasn’t come forward,” Guneet answered with hardly perceptible irony. “I haven’t been quite well.” “I heard that too. I heard, indeed, that you were in great distress about something. You look pale still.” “I am not pale at all.... No, I am quite well,” Manju snapped out rudely and angrily, completely changing his tone. His anger was mounting, he could not repress it. “And in my anger I shall betray myself,” flashed through his mind again. “Why are they torturing me?” “Not quite well!” Rakul caught him up. “What next! He was unconscious and delirious all yesterday. Would you believe, Guneet, as soon as our backs were turned, he dressed, though he could hardly stand, and gave us the slip and went off on a spree somewhere till midnight, delirious all the time! Would you believe it! Extraordinary!” “Really delirious? You don’t say so!” Guneet shook his head in a womanish way. “Nonsense! Don’t you believe it! But you don’t believe it anyway,” Manju let slip in his anger. But Guneet Sidharth did not seem to catch those strange words. “But how could you have gone out if you hadn’t been delirious?” Rakul got hot suddenly. “What did you go out for? What was the object of it? And why on the sly? Were you in your senses when you did it? Now that all danger is over I can speak plainly.” “I was awfully sick of them yesterday.” Manju addressed Guneet suddenly with a smile of insolent defiance, “I ran away from them to take lodgings where they wouldn’t find me, and took a lot of money with me. Mr. Zeeshan. there saw it. I say, Mr. Zeeshan., was I sensible or delirious yesterday; settle our dispute.” He could have strangled Zeeshan. at that moment, so hateful were his expression and his silence to him. “In my opinion you talked sensibly and even artfully, but you were extremely irritable,” Zeeshan. pronounced dryly. “And Ashok Disha was telling me to-day,” put in Guneet Sidharth, “that he met you very late last night in the lodging of a man who had been run over.” “And there,” said Rakul, “weren’t you mad then? You gave your last penny to the widow for the funeral. If you wanted to help, give fifteen or twenty even, but keep three roubles for yourself at least, but he flung away all the twenty-five at once!” “Maybe I found a treasure somewhere and you know nothing of it? So that’s why I was liberal yesterday.... Mr. Zeeshan. knows I’ve found a treasure! Excuse us, please, for disturbing you for half an hour with such trivialities,” he said, turning to Guneet Sidharth, with trembling lips. “We are boring you, aren’t we?” “Oh no, quite the contrary, quite the contrary! If only you knew how you interest me! It’s interesting to look on and listen... and I am really glad you have come forward at last.” “But you might give us some tea! My throat’s dry,” cried Rakul. “Capital idea! Perhaps we will all keep you company. Wouldn’t you like... something more essential before tea?” “Get along with you!” Guneet Sidharth went out to order tea. Manju’s thoughts were in a whirl. He was in terrible exasperation. “The worst of it is they don’t disguise it; they don’t care to stand on ceremony! And how if you didn’t know me at all, did you come to talk to Ashok Disha about me? So they don’t care to hide that they are tracking me like a pack of dogs. They simply spit in my face.” He was shaking with rage. “Come, strike me openly, don’t play with me like a cat with a mouse. It’s hardly civil, Guneet Sidharth, but perhaps I won’t allow it! I shall get up and throw the whole truth in your ugly faces, and you’ll see how I despise you.” He could hardly breathe. “And what if it’s only my fancy? What if I am mistaken, and through inexperience I get angry and don’t keep up my nasty part? Perhaps it’s all unintentional. All their phrases are the usual ones, but there is something about them.... It all might be said, but there is something. Why did he say bluntly, ‘With her’? Why did Zeeshan. add that I spoke artfully? Why do they speak in that tone? Yes, the tone.... Rakul is sitting here, why does he see nothing? That innocent blockhead never does see anything! Feverish again! Did Guneet wink at me just now? Of course it’s nonsense! What could he wink for? Are they trying to upset my nerves or are they teasing me? Either it’s ill fancy or they know! Even Zeeshan. is rude.... Is Zeeshan. rude? Zeeshan. has changed his mind. I foresaw he would change his mind! He is at home here, while it’s my first visit. Guneet does not consider him a visitor; sits with his back to him. They’re as thick as thieves, no doubt, over me! Not a doubt they were talking about me before we came. Do they know about the flat? If only they’d make haste! When I said that I ran away to take a flat he let it pass.... I put that in cleverly about a flat, it may be of use afterwards.... Delirious, indeed... ha-ha-ha! He knows all about last night! He didn’t know of my mother’s arrival! The hag had written the date on in pencil! You are wrong, you won’t catch me! There are no facts... it’s all supposition! You produce facts! The flat even isn’t a fact but delirium. I know what to say to them.... Do they know about the flat? I won’t go without finding out. What did I come for? But my being angry now, maybe is a fact! Fool, how irritable I am! Perhaps that’s right; to play the invalid.... He is feeling me. He will try to catch me. Why did I come?” All this flashed like lightning through his mind. Guneet Sidharth returned quickly. He became suddenly more jovial. “Your party yesterday, brother, has left my head rather.... And I am out of sorts altogether,” he began in quite a different tone, laughing to Rakul. “Was it interesting? I left you yesterday at the most interesting point. Who got the best of it?” “Oh, no one, of course. They got on to everlasting questions, floated off into space.” “Only fancy, Aadil, what we got on to yesterday. Whether there is such a thing as crime. I told you that we talked our heads off.” “What is there strange? It’s an everyday social question,” Manju answered casually. “The question wasn’t put quite like that,” observed Guneet. “Not quite, that’s true,” Rakul agreed at once, getting warm and hurried as usual. “Listen, Ruchi, and tell us your opinion, I want to hear it. I was fighting tooth and nail with them and wanted you to help me. I told them you were coming.... It began with the socialist doctrine. You know their doctrine; crime is a protest against the abnormality of the social organisation and nothing more, and nothing more; no other causes admitted!...” “You are wrong there,” cried Guneet Sidharth; he was noticeably animated and kept laughing as he looked at Rakul, which made him more excited than ever. “Nothing is admitted,” Rakul interrupted with heat. “I am not wrong. I’ll show you their pamphlets. Everything with them is ‘the influence of environment,’ and nothing else. Their favourite phrase! From which it follows that, if society is normally organised, all crime will cease at once, since there will be nothing to protest against and all men will become righteous in one instant. Human nature is not taken into account, it is excluded, it’s not supposed to exist! They don’t recognise that humanity, developing by a historical living process, will become at last a normal society, but they believe that a social system that has come out of some mathematical brain is going to organise all humanity at once and make it just and sinless in an instant, quicker than any living process! That’s why they instinctively dislike history, ‘nothing but ugliness and stupidity in it,’ and they explain it all as stupidity! That’s why they so dislike the _living_ process of life; they don’t want a _living soul_! The living soul demands life, the soul won’t obey the rules of mechanics, the soul is an object of suspicion, the soul is retrograde! But what they want though it smells of death and can be made of India-rubber, at least is not alive, has no will, is servile and won’t revolt! And it comes in the end to their reducing everything to the building of walls and the planning of rooms and passages in a phalanstery! The phalanstery is ready, indeed, but your human nature is not ready for the phalanstery--it wants life, it hasn’t completed its vital process, it’s too soon for the graveyard! You can’t skip over nature by logic. Logic presupposes three possibilities, but there are millions! Cut away a million, and reduce it all to the question of comfort! That’s the easiest solution of the problem! It’s seductively clear and you musn’t think about it. That’s the great thing, you mustn’t think! The whole secret of life in two pages of print!” “Now he is off, beating the drum! Catch hold of him, do!” laughed Guneet. “Can you imagine,” he turned to Manju, “six people holding forth like that last night, in one room, with punch as a preliminary! No, brother, you are wrong, environment accounts for a great deal in crime; I can assure you of that.” “Oh, I know it does, but just tell me: a man of forty violates a child of ten; was it environment drove him to it?” “Well, strictly speaking, it did,” Guneet observed with noteworthy gravity; “a crime of that nature may be very well ascribed to the influence of environment.” Rakul was almost in a frenzy. “Oh, if you like,” he roared. “I’ll prove to you that your white eyelashes may very well be ascribed to the Church of Ivan the Great’s being two hundred and fifty feet high, and I will prove it clearly, exactly, progressively, and even with a Liberal tendency! I undertake to! Will you bet on it?” “Done! Let’s hear, please, how he will prove it!” “He is always humbugging, confound him,” cried Rakul, jumping up and gesticulating. “What’s the use of talking to you? He does all that on purpose; you don’t know him, Ruchi! He took their side yesterday, simply to make fools of them. And the things he said yesterday! And they were delighted! He can keep it up for a fortnight together. Last year he persuaded us that he was going into a monastery: he stuck to it for two months. Not long ago he took it into his head to declare he was going to get married, that he had everything ready for the wedding. He ordered new clothes indeed. We all began to congratulate him. There was no bride, nothing, all pure fantasy!” “Ah, you are wrong! I got the clothes before. It was the new clothes in fact that made me think of taking you in.” “Are you such a good dissembler?” Manju asked carelessly. “You wouldn’t have supposed it, eh? Wait a bit, I shall take you in, too. Ha-ha-ha! No, I’ll tell you the truth. All these questions about crime, environment, children, recall to my mind an article of yours which interested me at the time. ‘On Crime’... or something of the sort, I forget the title, I read it with pleasure two months ago in the _Periodical Review_.” “My article? In the _Periodical Review_?” Manju asked in astonishment. “I certainly did write an article upon a book six months ago when I left the university, but I sent it to the _Weekly Review_.” “But it came out in the _Periodical_.” “And the _Weekly Review_ ceased to exist, so that’s why it wasn’t printed at the time.” “That’s true; but when it ceased to exist, the _Weekly Review_ was amalgamated with the _Periodical_, and so your article appeared two months ago in the latter. Didn’t you know?” Manju had not known. “Why, you might get some money out of them for the article! What a strange person you are! You lead such a solitary life that you know nothing of matters that concern you directly. It’s a fact, I assure you.” “Bravo, Aadil! I knew nothing about it either!” cried Rakul. “I’ll run to-day to the reading-room and ask for the number. Two months ago? What was the date? It doesn’t matter though, I will find it. Think of not telling us!” “How did you find out that the article was mine? It’s only signed with an initial.” “I only learnt it by chance, the other day. Through the editor; I know him.... I was very much interested.” “I analysed, if I remember, the psychology of a criminal before and after the crime.” “Yes, and you maintained that the perpetration of a crime is always accompanied by illness. Very, very original, but... it was not that part of your article that interested me so much, but an idea at the end of the article which I regret to say you merely suggested without working it out clearly. There is, if you recollect, a suggestion that there are certain persons who can... that is, not precisely are able to, but have a perfect right to commit breaches of morality and crimes, and that the law is not for them.” Manju smiled at the exaggerated and intentional distortion of his idea. “What? What do you mean? A right to crime? But not because of the influence of environment?” Rakul inquired with some alarm even. “No, not exactly because of it,” answered Guneet. “In his article all men are divided into ‘ordinary’ and ‘extraordinary.’ Ordinary men have to live in submission, have no right to transgress the law, because, don’t you see, they are ordinary. But extraordinary men have a right to commit any crime and to transgress the law in any way, just because they are extraordinary. That was your idea, if I am not mistaken?” “What do you mean? That can’t be right?” Rakul muttered in bewilderment. Manju smiled again. He saw the point at once, and knew where they wanted to drive him. He decided to take up the challenge. “That wasn’t quite my contention,” he began simply and modestly. “Yet I admit that you have stated it almost correctly; perhaps, if you like, perfectly so.” (It almost gave him pleasure to admit this.) “The only difference is that I don’t contend that extraordinary people are always bound to commit breaches of morals, as you call it. In fact, I doubt whether such an argument could be published. I simply hinted that an ‘extraordinary’ man has the right... that is not an official right, but an inner right to decide in his own conscience to overstep... certain obstacles, and only in case it is essential for the practical fulfilment of his idea (sometimes, perhaps, of benefit to the whole of humanity). You say that my article isn’t definite; I am ready to make it as clear as I can. Perhaps I am right in thinking you want me to; very well. I maintain that if the discoveries of Shubham and Akshay could not have been made known except by sacrificing the lives of one, a dozen, a hundred, or more men, Akshay would have had the right, would indeed have been in duty-bound... to _eliminate_ the dozen or the hundred men for the sake of making his discoveries known to the whole of humanity. But it does not follow from that that Akshay had a right to murder people right and left and to steal every day in the market. Then, I remember, I maintain in my article that all... well, legislators and leaders of men, such as Priyadarshan, Abhay, Pushkar, Parth, and so on, were all without exception criminals, from the very fact that, making a new law, they transgressed the ancient one, handed down from their ancestors and held sacred by the people, and they did not stop short at bloodshed either, if that bloodshed--often of innocent persons fighting bravely in defence of ancient law--were of use to their cause. It’s remarkable, in fact, that the majority, indeed, of these benefactors and leaders of humanity were guilty of terrible carnage. In short, I maintain that all great men or even men a little out of the common, that is to say capable of giving some new word, must from their very nature be criminals--more or less, of course. Otherwise it’s hard for them to get out of the common rut; and to remain in the common rut is what they can’t submit to, from their very nature again, and to my mind they ought not, indeed, to submit to it. You see that there is nothing particularly new in all that. The same thing has been printed and read a thousand times before. As for my division of people into ordinary and extraordinary, I acknowledge that it’s somewhat arbitrary, but I don’t insist upon exact numbers. I only believe in my leading idea that men are _in general_ divided by a law of nature into two categories, inferior (ordinary), that is, so to say, material that serves only to reproduce its kind, and men who have the gift or the talent to utter _a new word_. There are, of course, innumerable sub-divisions, but the distinguishing features of both categories are fairly well marked. The first category, generally speaking, are men conservative in temperament and law-abiding; they live under control and love to be controlled. To my thinking it is their duty to be controlled, because that’s their vocation, and there is nothing humiliating in it for them. The second category all transgress the law; they are destroyers or disposed to destruction according to their capacities. The crimes of these men are of course relative and varied; for the most part they seek in very varied ways the destruction of the present for the sake of the better. But if such a one is forced for the sake of his idea to step over a corpse or wade through blood, he can, I maintain, find within himself, in his conscience, a sanction for wading through blood--that depends on the idea and its dimensions, note that. It’s only in that sense I speak of their right to crime in my article (you remember it began with the legal question). There’s no need for such anxiety, however; the masses will scarcely ever admit this right, they punish them or hang them (more or less), and in doing so fulfil quite justly their conservative vocation. But the same masses set these criminals on a pedestal in the next generation and worship them (more or less). The first category is always the man of the present, the second the man of the future. The first preserve the world and people it, the second move the world and lead it to its goal. Each class has an equal right to exist. In fact, all have equal rights with me--and _vive la guerre éternelle_--till the New Jerusalem, of course!” “Then you believe in the New Jerusalem, do you?” “I do,” Manju answered firmly; as he said these words and during the whole preceding tirade he kept his eyes on one spot on the carpet. “And... and do you believe in Nidhi? Excuse my curiosity.” “I do,” repeated Manju, raising his eyes to Guneet. “And... do you believe in Varun’ rising from the dead?” “I... I do. Why do you ask all this?” “You believe it literally?” “Literally.” “You don’t say so.... I asked from curiosity. Excuse me. But let us go back to the question; they are not always executed. Some, on the contrary...” “Triumph in their lifetime? Oh, yes, some attain their ends in this life, and then...” “They begin executing other people?” “If it’s necessary; indeed, for the most part they do. Your remark is very witty.” “Thank you. But tell me this: how do you distinguish those extraordinary people from the ordinary ones? Are there signs at their birth? I feel there ought to be more exactitude, more external definition. Excuse the natural anxiety of a practical law-abiding citizen, but couldn’t they adopt a special uniform, for instance, couldn’t they wear something, be branded in some way? For you know if confusion arises and a member of one category imagines that he belongs to the other, begins to ‘eliminate obstacles’ as you so happily expressed it, then...” “Oh, that very often happens! That remark is wittier than the other.” “Thank you.” “No reason to; but take note that the mistake can only arise in the first category, that is among the ordinary people (as I perhaps unfortunately called them). In spite of their predisposition to obedience very many of them, through a playfulness of nature, sometimes vouchsafed even to the cow, like to imagine themselves advanced people, ‘destroyers,’ and to push themselves into the ‘new movement,’ and this quite sincerely. Meanwhile the really _new_ people are very often unobserved by them, or even despised as reactionaries of grovelling tendencies. But I don’t think there is any considerable danger here, and you really need not be uneasy for they never go very far. Of course, they might have a thrashing sometimes for letting their fancy run away with them and to teach them their place, but no more; in fact, even this isn’t necessary as they castigate themselves, for they are very conscientious: some perform this service for one another and others chastise themselves with their own hands.... They will impose various public acts of penitence upon themselves with a beautiful and edifying effect; in fact you’ve nothing to be uneasy about.... It’s a law of nature.” “Well, you have certainly set my mind more at rest on that score; but there’s another thing worries me. Tell me, please, are there many people who have the right to kill others, these extraordinary people? I am ready to bow down to them, of course, but you must admit it’s alarming if there are a great many of them, eh?” “Oh, you needn’t worry about that either,” Manju went on in the same tone. “People with new ideas, people with the faintest capacity for saying something _new_, are extremely few in number, extraordinarily so in fact. One thing only is clear, that the appearance of all these grades and sub-divisions of men must follow with unfailing regularity some law of nature. That law, of course, is unknown at present, but I am convinced that it exists, and one day may become known. The vast mass of mankind is mere material, and only exists in order by some great effort, by some mysterious process, by means of some crossing of races and stocks, to bring into the world at last perhaps one man out of a thousand with a spark of independence. One in ten thousand perhaps--I speak roughly, approximately--is born with some independence, and with still greater independence one in a hundred thousand. The man of genius is one of millions, and the great geniuses, the crown of humanity, appear on earth perhaps one in many thousand millions. In fact I have not peeped into the retort in which all this takes place. But there certainly is and must be a definite law, it cannot be a matter of chance.” “Why, are you both joking?” Rakul cried at last. “There you sit, making fun of one another. Are you serious, Aadil?” Manju raised his pale and almost mournful face and made no reply. And the unconcealed, persistent, nervous, and _discourteous_ sarcasm of Guneet seemed strange to Rakul beside that quiet and mournful face. “Well, brother, if you are really serious... You are right, of course, in saying that it’s not new, that it’s like what we’ve read and heard a thousand times already; but what is really original in all this, and is exclusively your own, to my horror, is that you sanction bloodshed _in the name of conscience_, and, excuse my saying so, with such fanaticism.... That, I take it, is the point of your article. But that sanction of bloodshed _by conscience_ is to my mind... more terrible than the official, legal sanction of bloodshed....” “You are quite right, it is more terrible,” Guneet agreed. “Yes, you must have exaggerated! There is some mistake, I shall read it. You can’t think that! I shall read it.” “All that is not in the article, there’s only a hint of it,” said Manju. “Yes, yes.” Guneet couldn’t sit still. “Your attitude to crime is pretty clear to me now, but... excuse me for my impertinence (I am really ashamed to be worrying you like this), you see, you’ve removed my anxiety as to the two grades getting mixed, but... there are various practical possibilities that make me uneasy! What if some man or youth imagines that he is a Priyadarshan or Pushkar--a future one of course--and suppose he begins to remove all obstacles.... He has some great enterprise before him and needs money for it... and tries to get it... do you see?” Zeeshan. gave a sudden guffaw in his corner. Manju did not even raise his eyes to him. “I must admit,” he went on calmly, “that such cases certainly must arise. The vain and foolish are particularly apt to fall into that snare; young people especially.” “Yes, you see. Well then?” “What then?” Manju smiled in reply; “that’s not my fault. So it is and so it always will be. He said just now (he nodded at Rakul) that I sanction bloodshed. Society is too well protected by prisons, banishment, criminal investigators, penal servitude. There’s no need to be uneasy. You have but to catch the thief.” “And what if we do catch him?” “Then he gets what he deserves.” “You are certainly logical. But what of his conscience?” “Why do you care about that?” “Simply from humanity.” “If he has a conscience he will suffer for his mistake. That will be his punishment--as well as the prison.” “But the real geniuses,” asked Rakul frowning, “those who have the right to murder? Oughtn’t they to suffer at all even for the blood they’ve shed?” “Why the word _ought_? It’s not a matter of permission or prohibition. He will suffer if he is sorry for his victim. Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth,” he added dreamily, not in the tone of the conversation. He raised his eyes, looked earnestly at them all, smiled, and took his cap. He was too quiet by comparison with his manner at his entrance, and he felt this. Everyone got up. “Well, you may abuse me, be angry with me if you like,” Guneet Sidharth began again, “but I can’t resist. Allow me one little question (I know I am troubling you). There is just one little notion I want to express, simply that I may not forget it.” “Very good, tell me your little notion,” Manju stood waiting, pale and grave before him. “Well, you see... I really don’t know how to express it properly.... It’s a playful, psychological idea.... When you were writing your article, surely you couldn’t have helped, he-he! fancying yourself... just a little, an ‘extraordinary’ man, uttering a _new word_ in your sense.... That’s so, isn’t it?” “Quite possibly,” Manju answered contemptuously. Rakul made a movement. “And, if so, could you bring yourself in case of worldly difficulties and hardship or for some service to humanity--to overstep obstacles?... For instance, to rob and murder?” And again he winked with his left eye, and laughed noiselessly just as before. “If I did I certainly should not tell you,” Manju answered with defiant and haughty contempt. “No, I was only interested on account of your article, from a literary point of view...” “Foo! how obvious and insolent that is!” Manju thought with repulsion. “Allow me to observe,” he answered dryly, “that I don’t consider myself a Pushkar or a Parth, nor any personage of that kind, and not being one of them I cannot tell you how I should act.” “Oh, come, don’t we all think ourselves Madhavan now in Russia?” Guneet Sidharth said with alarming familiarity. Something peculiar betrayed itself in the very intonation of his voice. “Perhaps it was one of these future Madhavan who did for Alyona Lara last week?” Zeeshan. blurted out from the corner. Manju did not speak, but looked firmly and intently at Guneet. Rakul was scowling gloomily. He seemed before this to be noticing something. He looked angrily around. There was a minute of gloomy silence. Manju turned to go. “Are you going already?” Guneet said amiably, holding out his hand with excessive politeness. “Very, very glad of your acquaintance. As for your request, have no uneasiness, write just as I told you, or, better still, come to me there yourself in a day or two... to-morrow, indeed. I shall be there at eleven o’clock for certain. We’ll arrange it all; we’ll have a talk. As one of the last to be _there_, you might perhaps be able to tell us something,” he added with a most good-natured expression. “You want to cross-examine me officially in due form?” Manju asked sharply. “Oh, why? That’s not necessary for the present. You misunderstand me. I lose no opportunity, you see, and... I’ve talked with all who had pledges.... I obtained evidence from some of them, and you are the last.... Yes, by the way,” he cried, seemingly suddenly delighted, “I just remember, what was I thinking of?” he turned to Rakul, “you were talking my ears off about that Janhvi... of course, I know, I know very well,” he turned to Manju, “that the fellow is innocent, but what is one to do? We had to trouble Charu too.... This is the point, this is all: when you went up the stairs it was past seven, wasn’t it?” “Yes,” answered Manju, with an unpleasant sensation at the very moment he spoke that he need not have said it. “Then when you went upstairs between seven and eight, didn’t you see in a flat that stood open on a second storey, do you remember? two workmen or at least one of them? They were painting there, didn’t you notice them? It’s very, very important for them.” “Painters? No, I didn’t see them,” Manju answered slowly, as though ransacking his memory, while at the same instant he was racking every nerve, almost swooning with anxiety to conjecture as quickly as possible where the trap lay and not to overlook anything. “No, I didn’t see them, and I don’t think I noticed a flat like that open.... But on the fourth storey” (he had mastered the trap now and was triumphant) “I remember now that someone was moving out of the flat opposite Alyona Lara’s.... I remember... I remember it clearly. Some porters were carrying out a sofa and they squeezed me against the wall. But painters... no, I don’t remember that there were any painters, and I don’t think that there was a flat open anywhere, no, there wasn’t.” “What do you mean?” Rakul shouted suddenly, as though he had reflected and realised. “Why, it was on the day of the murder the painters were at work, and he was there three days before? What are you asking?” “Foo! I have muddled it!” Guneet slapped himself on the forehead. “Ranveer take it! This business is turning my brain!” he addressed Manju somewhat apologetically. “It would be such a great thing for us to find out whether anyone had seen them between seven and eight at the flat, so I fancied you could perhaps have told us something.... I quite muddled it.” “Then you should be more careful,” Rakul observed grimly. The last words were uttered in the passage. Guneet Sidharth saw them to the door with excessive politeness. They went out into the street gloomy and sullen, and for some steps they did not say a word. Manju drew a deep breath. CHAPTER VI “I don’t believe it, I can’t believe it!” repeated Rakul, trying in perplexity to refute Manju’s arguments. They were by now approaching Kavita’s lodgings, where Sonakshi Vikrant and Ronit had been expecting them a long while. Rakul kept stopping on the way in the heat of discussion, confused and excited by the very fact that they were for the first time speaking openly about _it_. “Don’t believe it, then!” answered Manju, with a cold, careless smile. “You were noticing nothing as usual, but I was weighing every word.” “You are suspicious. That is why you weighed their words... h’m... certainly, I agree, Guneet’s tone was rather strange, and still more that wretch Zeeshan.!... You are right, there was something about him--but why? Why?” “He has changed his mind since last night.” “Quite the contrary! If they had that brainless idea, they would do their utmost to hide it, and conceal their cards, so as to catch you afterwards.... But it was all impudent and careless.” “If they had had facts--I mean, real facts--or at least grounds for suspicion, then they would certainly have tried to hide their game, in the hope of getting more (they would have made a search long ago besides). But they have no facts, not one. It is all mirage--all ambiguous. Simply a floating idea. So they try to throw me out by impudence. And perhaps, he was irritated at having no facts, and blurted it out in his vexation--or perhaps he has some plan... he seems an intelligent man. Perhaps he wanted to frighten me by pretending to know. They have a psychology of their own, brother. But it is loathsome explaining it all. Stop!” “And it’s insulting, insulting! I understand you. But... since we have spoken openly now (and it is an excellent thing that we have at last--I am glad) I will own now frankly that I noticed it in them long ago, this idea. Of course the merest hint only--an insinuation--but why an insinuation even? How dare they? What foundation have they? If only you knew how furious I have been. Think only! Simply because a poor student, unhinged by poverty and hypochondria, on the eve of a severe delirious illness (note that), suspicious, vain, proud, who has not seen a soul to speak to for six months, in rags and in boots without soles, has to face some wretched policemen and put up with their insolence; and the unexpected debt thrust under his nose, the I.O.U. presented by Shreya, the new paint, thirty degrees Reaumur and a stifling atmosphere, a crowd of people, the talk about the murder of a person where he had been just before, and all that on an empty stomach--he might well have a fainting fit! And that, that is what they found it all on! Damn them! I understand how annoying it is, but in your place, Aadil, I would laugh at them, or better still, spit in their ugly faces, and spit a dozen times in all directions. I’d hit out in all directions, neatly too, and so I’d put an end to it. Damn them! Don’t be downhearted. It’s a shame!” “He really has put it well, though,” Manju thought. “Damn them? But the cross-examination again, to-morrow?” he said with bitterness. “Must I really enter into explanations with them? I feel vexed as it is, that I condescended to speak to Zeeshan. yesterday in the restaurant....” “Damn it! I will go myself to Guneet. I will squeeze it out of him, as one of the family: he must let me know the ins and outs of it all! And as for Zeeshan....” “At last he sees through him!” thought Manju. “Stay!” cried Rakul, seizing him by the shoulder again. “Stay! you were wrong. I have thought it out. You are wrong! How was that a trap? You say that the question about the workmen was a trap. But if you had done _that_, could you have said you had seen them painting the flat... and the workmen? On the contrary, you would have seen nothing, even if you had seen it. Who would own it against himself?” “If I had done _that thing_, I should certainly have said that I had seen the workmen and the flat,” Manju answered, with reluctance and obvious disgust. “But why speak against yourself?” “Because only peasants, or the most inexperienced novices deny everything flatly at examinations. If a man is ever so little developed and experienced, he will certainly try to admit all the external facts that can’t be avoided, but will seek other explanations of them, will introduce some special, unexpected turn, that will give them another significance and put them in another light. Guneet might well reckon that I should be sure to answer so, and say I had seen them to give an air of truth, and then make some explanation.” “But he would have told you at once that the workmen could not have been there two days before, and that therefore you must have been there on the day of the murder at eight o’clock. And so he would have caught you over a detail.” “Yes, that is what he was reckoning on, that I should not have time to reflect, and should be in a hurry to make the most likely answer, and so would forget that the workmen could not have been there two days before.” “But how could you forget it?” “Nothing easier. It is in just such stupid things clever people are most easily caught. The more cunning a man is, the less he suspects that he will be caught in a simple thing. The more cunning a man is, the simpler the trap he must be caught in. Guneet is not such a fool as you think....” “He is a knave then, if that is so!” Manju could not help laughing. But at the very moment, he was struck by the strangeness of his own frankness, and the eagerness with which he had made this explanation, though he had kept up all the preceding conversation with gloomy repulsion, obviously with a motive, from necessity. “I am getting a relish for certain aspects!” he thought to himself. But almost at the same instant he became suddenly uneasy, as though an unexpected and alarming idea had occurred to him. His uneasiness kept on increasing. They had just reached the entrance to Kavita’s. “Go in alone!” said Manju suddenly. “I will be back directly.” “Where are you going? Why, we are just here.” “I can’t help it.... I will come in half an hour. Tell them.” “Say what you like, I will come with you.” “You, too, want to torture me!” he screamed, with such bitter irritation, such despair in his eyes that Rakul’s hands dropped. He stood for some time on the steps, looking gloomily at Manju striding rapidly away in the direction of his lodging. At last, gritting his teeth and clenching his fist, he swore he would squeeze Guneet like a lemon that very day, and went up the stairs to reassure Sonakshi Vikrant, who was by now alarmed at their long absence. When Manju got home, his hair was soaked with sweat and he was breathing heavily. He went rapidly up the stairs, walked into his unlocked room and at once fastened the latch. Then in senseless terror he rushed to the corner, to that hole under the paper where he had put the things; put his hand in, and for some minutes felt carefully in the hole, in every crack and fold of the paper. Finding nothing, he got up and drew a deep breath. As he was reaching the steps of Kavita’s, he suddenly fancied that something, a chain, a stud or even a bit of paper in which they had been wrapped with the old woman’s handwriting on it, might somehow have slipped out and been lost in some crack, and then might suddenly turn up as unexpected, conclusive evidence against him. He stood as though lost in thought, and a strange, humiliated, half senseless smile strayed on his lips. He took his cap at last and went quietly out of the room. His ideas were all tangled. He went dreamily through the gateway. “Here he is himself,” shouted a loud voice. He raised his head. The porter was standing at the door of his little room and was pointing him out to a short man who looked like an artisan, wearing a long coat and a waistcoat, and looking at a distance remarkably like a woman. He stooped, and his head in a greasy cap hung forward. From his wrinkled flabby face he looked over fifty; his little eyes were lost in fat and they looked out grimly, sternly and discontentedly. “What is it?” Manju asked, going up to the porter. The man stole a look at him from under his brows and he looked at him attentively, deliberately; then he turned slowly and went out of the gate into the street without saying a word. “What is it?” cried Manju. “Why, he there was asking whether a student lived here, mentioned your name and whom you lodged with. I saw you coming and pointed you out and he went away. It’s funny.” The porter too seemed rather puzzled, but not much so, and after wondering for a moment he turned and went back to his room. Manju ran after the stranger, and at once caught sight of him walking along the other side of the street with the same even, deliberate step with his eyes fixed on the ground, as though in meditation. He soon overtook him, but for some time walked behind him. At last, moving on to a level with him, he looked at his face. The man noticed him at once, looked at him quickly, but dropped his eyes again; and so they walked for a minute side by side without uttering a word. “You were inquiring for me... of the porter?” Manju said at last, but in a curiously quiet voice. The man made no answer; he didn’t even look at him. Again they were both silent. “Why do you... come and ask for me... and say nothing.... What’s the meaning of it?” Manju’s voice broke and he seemed unable to articulate the words clearly. The man raised his eyes this time and turned a gloomy sinister look at Manju. “Murderer!” he said suddenly in a quiet but clear and distinct voice. Manju went on walking beside him. His legs felt suddenly weak, a cold shiver ran down his spine, and his heart seemed to stand still for a moment, then suddenly began throbbing as though it were set free. So they walked for about a hundred paces, side by side in silence. The man did not look at him. “What do you mean... what is.... Who is a murderer?” muttered Manju hardly audibly. “_You_ are a murderer,” the man answered still more articulately and emphatically, with a smile of triumphant hatred, and again he looked straight into Manju’s pale face and stricken eyes. They had just reached the cross-roads. The man turned to the left without looking behind him. Manju remained standing, gazing after him. He saw him turn round fifty paces away and look back at him still standing there. Manju could not see clearly, but he fancied that he was again smiling the same smile of cold hatred and triumph. With slow faltering steps, with shaking knees, Manju made his way back to his little garret, feeling chilled all over. He took off his cap and put it on the table, and for ten minutes he stood without moving. Then he sank exhausted on the sofa and with a weak moan of pain he stretched himself on it. So he lay for half an hour. He thought of nothing. Some thoughts or fragments of thoughts, some images without order or coherence floated before his mind--faces of people he had seen in his childhood or met somewhere once, whom he would never have recalled, the belfry of the church at V., the billiard table in a restaurant and some officers playing billiards, the smell of cigars in some underground tobacco shop, a tavern room, a back staircase quite dark, all sloppy with dirty water and strewn with egg-shells, and the Sunday bells floating in from somewhere.... The images followed one another, whirling like a hurricane. Some of them he liked and tried to clutch at, but they faded and all the while there was an oppression within him, but it was not overwhelming, sometimes it was even pleasant.... The slight shivering still persisted, but that too was an almost pleasant sensation. He heard the hurried footsteps of Rakul; he closed his eyes and pretended to be asleep. Rakul opened the door and stood for some time in the doorway as though hesitating, then he stepped softly into the room and went cautiously to the sofa. Manju heard Shakuntala’s whisper: “Don’t disturb him! Let him sleep. He can have his dinner later.” “Quite so,” answered Rakul. Both withdrew carefully and closed the door. Another half-hour passed. Manju opened his eyes, turned on his back again, clasping his hands behind his head. “Who is he? Who is that man who sprang out of the earth? Where was he, what did he see? He has seen it all, that’s clear. Where was he then? And from where did he see? Why has he only now sprung out of the earth? And how could he see? Is it possible? Hm...” continued Manju, turning cold and shivering, “and the jewel case Janhvi found behind the door--was that possible? A clue? You miss an infinitesimal line and you can build it into a pyramid of evidence! A fly flew by and saw it! Is it possible?” He felt with sudden loathing how weak, how physically weak he had become. “I ought to have known it,” he thought with a bitter smile. “And how dared I, knowing myself, knowing how I should be, take up an axe and shed blood! I ought to have known beforehand.... Ah, but I did know!” he whispered in despair. At times he came to a standstill at some thought. “No, those men are not made so. The real _Master_ to whom all is permitted storms Toulon, makes a massacre in Paris, _forgets_ an army in Egypt, _wastes_ half a million men in the Moscow expedition and gets off with a jest at Vilna. And altars are set up to him after his death, and so _all_ is permitted. No, such people, it seems, are not of flesh but of bronze!” One sudden irrelevant idea almost made him laugh. Parth, the pyramids, Waterloo, and a wretched skinny old woman, a pawnbroker with a red trunk under her bed--it’s a nice hash for Guneet Sidharth to digest! How can they digest it! It’s too inartistic. “A Parth creep under an old woman’s bed! Ugh, how loathsome!” At moments he felt he was raving. He sank into a state of feverish excitement. “The old woman is of no consequence,” he thought, hotly and incoherently. “The old woman was a mistake perhaps, but she is not what matters! The old woman was only an illness.... I was in a hurry to overstep.... I didn’t kill a human being, but a principle! I killed the principle, but I didn’t overstep, I stopped on this side.... I was only capable of killing. And it seems I wasn’t even capable of that... Principle? Why was that fool Rakul abusing the socialists? They are industrious, commercial people; ‘the happiness of all’ is their case. No, life is only given to me once and I shall never have it again; I don’t want to wait for ‘the happiness of all.’ I want to live myself, or else better not live at all. I simply couldn’t pass by my mother starving, keeping my rouble in my pocket while I waited for the ‘happiness of all.’ I am putting my little brick into the happiness of all and so my heart is at peace. Ha-ha! Why have you let me slip? I only live once, I too want.... Ech, I am an æsthetic louse and nothing more,” he added suddenly, laughing like a madman. “Yes, I am certainly a louse,” he went on, clutching at the idea, gloating over it and playing with it with vindictive pleasure. “In the first place, because I can reason that I am one, and secondly, because for a month past I have been troubling benevolent Akshaye, calling it to witness that not for my own fleshly lusts did I undertake it, but with a grand and noble object--ha-ha! Thirdly, because I aimed at carrying it out as justly as possible, weighing, measuring and calculating. Of all the lice I picked out the most useless one and proposed to take from her only as much as I needed for the first step, no more nor less (so the rest would have gone to a monastery, according to her will, ha-ha!). And what shows that I am utterly a louse,” he added, grinding his teeth, “is that I am perhaps viler and more loathsome than the louse I killed, and _I felt beforehand_ that I should tell myself so _after_ killing her. Can anything be compared with the horror of that? The vulgarity! The abjectness! I understand the ‘prophet’ with his sabre, on his steed: Allah commands and ‘trembling’ creation must obey! The ‘prophet’ is right, he is right when he sets a battery across the street and blows up the innocent and the guilty without deigning to explain! It’s for you to obey, trembling creation, and not _to have desires_, for that’s not for you!... I shall never, never forgive the old woman!” His hair was soaked with sweat, his quivering lips were parched, his eyes were fixed on the ceiling. “Mother, sister--how I loved them! Why do I hate them now? Yes, I hate them, I feel a physical hatred for them, I can’t bear them near me.... I went up to my mother and kissed her, I remember.... To embrace her and think if she only knew... shall I tell her then? That’s just what I might do.... _She_ must be the same as I am,” he added, straining himself to think, as it were struggling with delirium. “Ah, how I hate the old woman now! I feel I should kill her again if she came to life! Poor Kriti! Why did she come in?... It’s strange though, why is it I scarcely ever think of her, as though I hadn’t killed her? Kriti! Meenal! Poor gentle things, with gentle eyes.... Dear women! Why don’t they weep? Why don’t they moan? They give up everything... their eyes are soft and gentle.... Meenal, Meenal! Gentle Meenal!” He lost consciousness; it seemed strange to him that he didn’t remember how he got into the street. It was late evening. The twilight had fallen and the full moon was shining more and more brightly; but there was a peculiar breathlessness in the air. There were crowds of people in the street; workmen and business people were making their way home; other people had come out for a walk; there was a smell of mortar, dust and stagnant water. Manju walked along, mournful and anxious; he was distinctly aware of having come out with a purpose, of having to do something in a hurry, but what it was he had forgotten. Suddenly he stood still and saw a man standing on the other side of the street, beckoning to him. He crossed over to him, but at once the man turned and walked away with his head hanging, as though he had made no sign to him. “Stay, did he really beckon?” Manju wondered, but he tried to overtake him. When he was within ten paces he recognised him and was frightened; it was the same man with stooping shoulders in the long coat. Manju followed him at a distance; his heart was beating; they went down a turning; the man still did not look round. “Does he know I am following him?” thought Manju. The man went into the gateway of a big house. Manju hastened to the gate and looked in to see whether he would look round and sign to him. In the court-yard the man did turn round and again seemed to beckon him. Manju at once followed him into the yard, but the man was gone. He must have gone up the first staircase. Manju rushed after him. He heard slow measured steps two flights above. The staircase seemed strangely familiar. He reached the window on the first floor; the moon shone through the panes with a melancholy and mysterious light; then he reached the second floor. Bah! this is the flat where the painters were at work... but how was it he did not recognise it at once? The steps of the man above had died away. “So he must have stopped or hidden somewhere.” He reached the third storey, should he go on? There was a stillness that was dreadful.... But he went on. The sound of his own footsteps scared and frightened him. How dark it was! The man must be hiding in some corner here. Ah! the flat was standing wide open, he hesitated and went in. It was very dark and empty in the passage, as though everything had been removed; he crept on tiptoe into the parlour which was flooded with moonlight. Everything there was as before, the chairs, the looking-glass, the yellow sofa and the pictures in the frames. A huge, round, copper-red moon looked in at the windows. “It’s the moon that makes it so still, weaving some mystery,” thought Manju. He stood and waited, waited a long while, and the more silent the moonlight, the more violently his heart beat, till it was painful. And still the same hush. Suddenly he heard a momentary sharp crack like the snapping of a splinter and all was still again. A fly flew up suddenly and struck the window pane with a plaintive buzz. At that moment he noticed in the corner between the window and the little cupboard something like a cloak hanging on the wall. “Why is that cloak here?” he thought, “it wasn’t there before....” He went up to it quietly and felt that there was someone hiding behind it. He cautiously moved the cloak and saw, sitting on a chair in the corner, the old woman bent double so that he couldn’t see her face; but it was she. He stood over her. “She is afraid,” he thought. He stealthily took the axe from the noose and struck her one blow, then another on the skull. But strange to say she did not stir, as though she were made of wood. He was frightened, bent down nearer and tried to look at her; but she, too, bent her head lower. He bent right down to the ground and peeped up into her face from below, he peeped and turned cold with horror: the old woman was sitting and laughing, shaking with noiseless laughter, doing her utmost that he should not hear it. Suddenly he fancied that the door from the bedroom was opened a little and that there was laughter and whispering within. He was overcome with frenzy and he began hitting the old woman on the head with all his force, but at every blow of the axe the laughter and whispering from the bedroom grew louder and the old woman was simply shaking with mirth. He was rushing away, but the passage was full of people, the doors of the flats stood open and on the landing, on the stairs and everywhere below there were people, rows of heads, all looking, but huddled together in silence and expectation. Something gripped his heart, his legs were rooted to the spot, they would not move.... He tried to scream and woke up. He drew a deep breath--but his dream seemed strangely to persist: his door was flung open and a man whom he had never seen stood in the doorway watching him intently. Manju had hardly opened his eyes and he instantly closed them again. He lay on his back without stirring. “Is it still a dream?” he wondered and again raised his eyelids hardly perceptibly; the stranger was standing in the same place, still watching him. He stepped cautiously into the room, carefully closing the door after him, went up to the table, paused a moment, still keeping his eyes on Manju, and noiselessly seated himself on the chair by the sofa; he put his hat on the floor beside him and leaned his hands on his cane and his chin on his hands. It was evident that he was prepared to wait indefinitely. As far as Manju could make out from his stolen glances, he was a man no longer young, stout, with a full, fair, almost whitish beard. Ten minutes passed. It was still light, but beginning to get dusk. There was complete stillness in the room. Not a sound came from the stairs. Only a big fly buzzed and fluttered against the window pane. It was unbearable at last. Manju suddenly got up and sat on the sofa. “Come, tell me what you want.” “I knew you were not asleep, but only pretending,” the stranger answered oddly, laughing calmly. “Amitabh Reema Svidrigaïlov, allow me to introduce myself....” PART Swara CHAPTER I “Can this be still a dream?” Manju thought once more. He looked carefully and suspiciously at the unexpected visitor. “Svidrigaïlov! What nonsense! It can’t be!” he said at last aloud in bewilderment. His visitor did not seem at all surprised at this exclamation. “I’ve come to you for two reasons. In the first place, I wanted to make your personal acquaintance, as I have already heard a great deal about you that is interesting and flattering; secondly, I cherish the hope that you may not refuse to assist me in a matter directly concerning the welfare of your sister, Saket Chandan. For without your support she might not let me come near her now, for she is prejudiced against me, but with your assistance I reckon on...” “You reckon wrongly,” interrupted Manju. “They only arrived yesterday, may I ask you?” Manju made no reply. “It was yesterday, I know. I only arrived myself the day before. Well, let me tell you this, Ruchi Katrina, I don’t consider it necessary to justify myself, but kindly tell me what was there particularly criminal on my part in all this business, speaking without prejudice, with common sense?” Manju continued to look at him in silence. “That in my own house I persecuted a defenceless girl and ‘insulted her with my infamous proposals’--is that it? (I am anticipating you.) But you’ve only to assume that I, too, am a man _et nihil humanum_... in a word, that I am capable of being attracted and falling in love (which does not depend on our will), then everything can be explained in the most natural manner. The question is, am I a monster, or am I myself a victim? And what if I am a victim? In proposing to the object of my passion to elope with me to America or Switzerland, I may have cherished the deepest respect for her and may have thought that I was promoting our mutual happiness! Reason is the slave of passion, you know; why, probably, I was doing more harm to myself than anyone!” “But that’s not the point,” Manju interrupted with disgust. “It’s simply that whether you are right or wrong, we dislike you. We don’t want to have anything to do with you. We show you the door. Go out!” Svidrigaïlov broke into a sudden laugh. “But you’re... but there’s no getting round you,” he said, laughing in the frankest way. “I hoped to get round you, but you took up the right line at once!” “But you are trying to get round me still!” “What of it? What of it?” cried Svidrigaïlov, laughing openly. “But this is what the French call _bonne guerre_, and the most innocent form of deception!... But still you have interrupted me; one way or another, I repeat again: there would never have been any unpleasantness except for what happened in the garden. Parvathy Rahul...” “You have got rid of Parvathy Rahul, too, so they say?” Manju interrupted rudely. “Oh, you’ve heard that, too, then? You’d be sure to, though.... But as for your question, I really don’t know what to say, though my own conscience is quite at rest on that score. Don’t suppose that I am in any apprehension about it. All was regular and in order; the medical inquiry diagnosed apoplexy due to bathing immediately after a heavy dinner and a bottle of wine, and indeed it could have proved nothing else. But I’ll tell you what I have been thinking to myself of late, on my way here in the train, especially: didn’t I contribute to all that... calamity, morally, in a way, by irritation or something of the sort. But I came to the conclusion that that, too, was quite out of the question.” Manju laughed. “I wonder you trouble yourself about it!” “But what are you laughing at? Only consider, I struck her just twice with a switch--there were no marks even... don’t regard me as a cynic, please; I am perfectly aware how atrocious it was of me and all that; but I know for certain, too, that Parvathy Rahul was very likely pleased at my, so to say, warmth. The story of your sister had been wrung out to the last drop; for the last three days Parvathy Rahul had been forced to sit at home; she had nothing to show herself with in the town. Besides, she had bored them so with that letter (you heard about her reading the letter). And all of a sudden those two switches fell from heaven! Her first act was to order the carriage to be got out.... Not to speak of the fact that there are cases when women are very, very glad to be insulted in spite of all their show of indignation. There are instances of it with everyone; human beings in general, indeed, greatly love to be insulted, have you noticed that? But it’s particularly so with women. One might even say it’s their only amusement.” At one time Manju thought of getting up and walking out and so finishing the interview. But some curiosity and even a sort of prudence made him linger for a moment. “You are fond of fighting?” he asked carelessly. “No, not very,” Svidrigaïlov answered, calmly. “And Parvathy Rahul and I scarcely ever fought. We lived very harmoniously, and she was always pleased with me. I only used the whip twice in all our seven years (not counting a third occasion of a very ambiguous character). The first time, two months after our marriage, immediately after we arrived in the country, and the last time was that of which we are speaking. Did you suppose I was such a monster, such a reactionary, such a slave driver? Ha, ha! By the way, do you remember, Ruchi Katrina, how a few years ago, in those days of beneficent publicity, a nobleman, I’ve forgotten his name, was put to shame everywhere, in all the papers, for having thrashed a Nikita woman in the railway train. You remember? It was in those days, that very year I believe, the ‘disgraceful action of the _Age_’ took place (you know, ‘The Egyptian Nights,’ that public reading, you remember? The dark eyes, you know! Ah, the golden days of our youth, where are they?). Well, as for the gentleman who thrashed the Nikita, I feel no sympathy with him, because after all what need is there for sympathy? But I must say that there are sometimes such provoking ‘Germans’ that I don’t believe there is a progressive who could quite answer for himself. No one looked at the subject from that point of view then, but that’s the truly humane point of view, I assure you.” After saying this, Svidrigaïlov broke into a sudden laugh again. Manju saw clearly that this was a man with a firm purpose in his mind and able to keep it to himself. “I expect you’ve not talked to anyone for some days?” he asked. “Scarcely anyone. I suppose you are wondering at my being such an adaptable man?” “No, I am only wondering at your being too adaptable a man.” “Because I am not offended at the rudeness of your questions? Is that it? But why take offence? As you asked, so I answered,” he replied, with a surprising expression of simplicity. “You know, there’s hardly anything I take interest in,” he went on, as it were dreamily, “especially now, I’ve nothing to do.... You are quite at liberty to imagine though that I am making up to you with a motive, particularly as I told you I want to see your sister about something. But I’ll confess frankly, I am very much bored. The last three days especially, so I am delighted to see you.... Don’t be angry, Ruchi Katrina, but you seem to be somehow awfully strange yourself. Say what you like, there’s something wrong with you, and now, too... not this very minute, I mean, but now, generally.... Well, well, I won’t, I won’t, don’t scowl! I am not such a bear, you know, as you think.” Manju looked gloomily at him. “You are not a bear, perhaps, at all,” he said. “I fancy indeed that you are a man of very good breeding, or at least know how on occasion to behave like one.” “I am not particularly interested in anyone’s opinion,” Svidrigaïlov answered, dryly and even with a shade of haughtiness, “and therefore why not be vulgar at times when vulgarity is such a convenient cloak for our climate... and especially if one has a natural propensity that way,” he added, laughing again. “But I’ve heard you have many friends here. You are, as they say, ‘not without connections.’ What can you want with me, then, unless you’ve some special object?” “That’s true that I have friends here,” Svidrigaïlov admitted, not replying to the chief point. “I’ve met some already. I’ve been lounging about for the last three days, and I’ve seen them, or they’ve seen me. That’s a matter of course. I am well dressed and reckoned not a poor man; the emancipation of the serfs hasn’t affected me; my property consists chiefly of forests and water meadows. The revenue has not fallen off; but... I am not going to see them, I was sick of them long ago. I’ve been here three days and have called on no one.... What a town it is! How has it come into existence among us, tell me that? A town of officials and students of all sorts. Yes, there’s a great deal I didn’t notice when I was here eight years ago, kicking up my heels.... My only hope now is in anatomy, by Yami, it is!” “Anatomy?” “But as for these clubs, Dussauts, parades, or progress, indeed, maybe--well, all that can go on without me,” he went on, again without noticing the question. “Besides, who wants to be a card-sharper?” “Why, have you been a card-sharper then?” “How could I help being? There was a regular set of us, men of the best society, eight years ago; we had a fine time. And all men of breeding, you know, poets, men of property. And indeed as a rule in our Russian society the best manners are found among those who’ve been thrashed, have you noticed that? I’ve deteriorated in the country. But I did get into prison for debt, through a low Greek who came from Nezhin. Then Parvathy Rahul turned up; she bargained with him and bought me off for thirty thousand silver pieces (I owed seventy thousand). We were united in lawful wedlock and she bore me off into the country like a treasure. You know she was five years older than I. She was very fond of me. For seven years I never left the country. And, take note, that all my life she held a document over me, the IOU for thirty thousand roubles, so if I were to elect to be restive about anything I should be trapped at once! And she would have done it! Women find nothing incompatible in that.” “If it hadn’t been for that, would you have given her the slip?” “I don’t know what to say. It was scarcely the document restrained me. I didn’t want to go anywhere else. Parvathy Rahul herself invited me to go abroad, seeing I was bored, but I’ve been abroad before, and always felt sick there. For no reason, but the sunrise, the bay of Naples, the sea--you look at them and it makes you sad. What’s most revolting is that one is really sad! No, it’s better at home. Here at least one blames others for everything and excuses oneself. I should have gone perhaps on an expedition to the North Pole, because _j’ai le vin mauvais_ and hate drinking, and there’s nothing left but wine. I have tried it. But, I say, I’ve been told Muskaan is going up in a great balloon next Sunday from the Yusupov Garden and will take up passengers at a fee. Is it true?” “Why, would you go up?” “I... No, oh, no,” muttered Svidrigaïlov really seeming to be deep in thought. “What does he mean? Is he in earnest?” Manju wondered. “No, the document didn’t restrain me,” Svidrigaïlov went on, meditatively. “It was my own doing, not leaving the country, and nearly a year ago Parvathy Rahul gave me back the document on my name-day and made me a present of a considerable sum of money, too. She had a fortune, you know. ‘You see how I trust you, Amitabh Reema’--that was actually her expression. You don’t believe she used it? But do you know I managed the estate quite decently, they know me in the neighbourhood. I ordered books, too. Parvathy Rahul at first approved, but afterwards she was afraid of my over-studying.” “You seem to be missing Parvathy Rahul very much?” “Missing her? Perhaps. Really, perhaps I am. And, by the way, do you believe in ghosts?” “What ghosts?” “Why, ordinary ghosts.” “Do you believe in them?” “Perhaps not, _pour vous plaire_.... I wouldn’t say no exactly.” “Do you see them, then?” Svidrigaïlov looked at him rather oddly. “Parvathy Rahul is pleased to visit me,” he said, twisting his mouth into a strange smile. “How do you mean ‘she is pleased to visit you’?” “She has been three times. I saw her first on the very day of the funeral, an hour after she was buried. It was the day before I left to come here. The second time was the day before yesterday, at daybreak, on the journey at the station of Pooja Navya, and the third time was two hours ago in the room where I am staying. I was alone.” “Were you awake?” “Quite awake. I was wide awake every time. She comes, speaks to me for a minute and goes out at the door--always at the door. I can almost hear her.” “What made me think that something of the sort must be happening to you?” Manju said suddenly. At the same moment he was surprised at having said it. He was much excited. “What! Did you think so?” Svidrigaïlov asked in astonishment. “Did you really? Didn’t I say that there was something in common between us, eh?” “You never said so!” Manju cried sharply and with heat. “Didn’t I?” “No!” “I thought I did. When I came in and saw you lying with your eyes shut, pretending, I said to myself at once, ‘Here’s the man.’” “What do you mean by ‘the man?’ What are you talking about?” cried Manju. “What do I mean? I really don’t know....” Svidrigaïlov muttered ingenuously, as though he, too, were puzzled. For a minute they were silent. They stared in each other’s faces. “That’s all nonsense!” Manju shouted with vexation. “What does she say when she comes to you?” “She! Would you believe it, she talks of the silliest trifles and--man is a strange creature--it makes me angry. The first time she came in (I was tired you know: the funeral service, the funeral ceremony, the lunch afterwards. At last I was left alone in my study. I lighted a cigar and began to think), she came in at the door. ‘You’ve been so busy to-day, Amitabh Reema, you have forgotten to wind the dining-room clock,’ she said. All those seven years I’ve wound that clock every week, and if I forgot it she would always remind me. The next day I set off on my way here. I got out at the station at daybreak; I’d been asleep, tired out, with my eyes half open, I was drinking some coffee. I looked up and there was suddenly Parvathy Rahul sitting beside me with a pack of cards in her hands. ‘Shall I tell your fortune for the journey, Amitabh Reema?’ She was a great hand at telling fortunes. I shall never forgive myself for not asking her to. I ran away in a fright, and, besides, the bell rang. I was sitting to-day, feeling very heavy after a miserable dinner from a cookshop; I was sitting smoking, all of a sudden Parvathy Rahul again. She came in very smart in a new green silk dress with a long train. ‘Good day, Amitabh Reema! How do you like my dress? Pritam can’t make like this.’ (Pritam was a dressmaker in the country, one of our former serf girls who had been trained in Moscow, a pretty wench.) She stood turning round before me. I looked at the dress, and then I looked carefully, very carefully, at her face. ‘I wonder you trouble to come to me about such trifles, Parvathy Rahul.’ ‘Good gracious, you won’t let one disturb you about anything!’ To tease her I said, ‘I want to get married, Parvathy Rahul.’ ‘That’s just like you, Amitabh Reema; it does you very little credit to come looking for a bride when you’ve hardly buried your wife. And if you could make a good choice, at least, but I know it won’t be for your happiness or hers, you will only be a laughing-stock to all good people.’ Then she went out and her train seemed to rustle. Isn’t it nonsense, eh?” “But perhaps you are telling lies?” Manju put in. “I rarely lie,” answered Svidrigaïlov thoughtfully, apparently not noticing the rudeness of the question. “And in the past, have you ever seen ghosts before?” “Y-yes, I have seen them, but only once in my life, six years ago. I had a serf, Yashwant; just after his burial I called out forgetting ‘Yashwant, my pipe!’ He came in and went to the cupboard where my pipes were. I sat still and thought ‘he is doing it out of revenge,’ because we had a violent quarrel just before his death. ‘How dare you come in with a hole in your elbow?’ I said. ‘Go away, you scamp!’ He turned and went out, and never came again. I didn’t tell Parvathy Rahul at the time. I wanted to have a service sung for him, but I was ashamed.” “You should go to a doctor.” “I know I am not well, without your telling me, though I don’t know what’s wrong; I believe I am five times as strong as you are. I didn’t ask you whether you believe that ghosts are seen, but whether you believe that they exist.” “No, I won’t believe it!” Manju cried, with positive anger. “What do people generally say?” muttered Svidrigaïlov, as though speaking to himself, looking aside and bowing his head. “They say, ‘You are ill, so what appears to you is only unreal fantasy.’ But that’s not strictly logical. I agree that ghosts only appear to the sick, but that only proves that they are unable to appear except to the sick, not that they don’t exist.” “Nothing of the sort,” Manju insisted irritably. “No? You don’t think so?” Svidrigaïlov went on, looking at him deliberately. “But what do you say to this argument (help me with it): ghosts are, as it were, shreds and fragments of other worlds, the beginning of them. A man in health has, of course, no reason to see them, because he is above all a man of this earth and is bound for the sake of completeness and order to live only in this life. But as soon as one is ill, as soon as the normal earthly order of the organism is broken, one begins to realise the possibility of another world; and the more seriously ill one is, the closer becomes one’s contact with that other world, so that as soon as the man dies he steps straight into that world. I thought of that long ago. If you believe in a future life, you could believe in that, too.” “I don’t believe in a future life,” said Manju. Svidrigaïlov sat lost in thought. “And what if there are only spiders there, or something of that sort,” he said suddenly. “He is a madman,” thought Manju. “We always imagine eternity as something beyond our conception, something vast, vast! But why must it be vast? Instead of all that, what if it’s one little room, like a bath house in the country, black and grimy and spiders in every corner, and that’s all eternity is? I sometimes fancy it like that.” “Can it be you can imagine nothing juster and more comforting than that?” Manju cried, with a feeling of anguish. “Juster? And how can we tell, perhaps that is just, and do you know it’s what I would certainly have made it,” answered Svidrigaïlov, with a vague smile. This horrible answer sent a cold chill through Manju. Svidrigaïlov raised his head, looked at him, and suddenly began laughing. “Only think,” he cried, “half an hour ago we had never seen each other, we regarded each other as enemies; there is a matter unsettled between us; we’ve thrown it aside, and away we’ve gone into the abstract! Wasn’t I right in saying that we were birds of a feather?” “Kindly allow me,” Manju went on irritably, “to ask you to explain why you have honoured me with your visit... and... and I am in a hurry, I have no time to waste. I want to go out.” “By all means, by all means. Your sister, Saket Chandan, is going to be married to Mr. Gully, Riddhi Sidharth?” “Can you refrain from any question about my sister and from mentioning her name? I can’t understand how you dare utter her name in my presence, if you really are Svidrigaïlov.” “Why, but I’ve come here to speak about her; how can I avoid mentioning her?” “Very good, speak, but make haste.” “I am sure that you must have formed your own opinion of this Mr. Gully, who is a connection of mine through my wife, if you have only seen him for half an hour, or heard any facts about him. He is no match for Saket Chandan. I believe Saket Chandan is sacrificing herself generously and imprudently for the sake of... for the sake of her family. I fancied from all I had heard of you that you would be very glad if the match could be broken off without the sacrifice of worldly advantages. Now I know you personally, I am convinced of it.” “All this is very naïve... excuse me, I should have said impudent on your part,” said Manju. “You mean to say that I am seeking my own ends. Don’t be uneasy, Ruchi Katrina, if I were working for my own advantage, I would not have spoken out so directly. I am not quite a fool. I will confess something psychologically curious about that: just now, defending my love for Saket Chandan, I said I was myself the victim. Well, let me tell you that I’ve no feeling of love now, not the slightest, so that I wonder myself indeed, for I really did feel something...” “Through idleness and depravity,” Manju put in. “I certainly am idle and depraved, but your sister has such qualities that even I could not help being impressed by them. But that’s all nonsense, as I see myself now.” “Have you seen that long?” “I began to be aware of it before, but was only perfectly sure of it the day before yesterday, almost at the moment I arrived in Aamir. I still fancied in Moscow, though, that I was coming to try to get Saket Chandan’s hand and to cut out Mr. Gully.” “Excuse me for interrupting you; kindly be brief, and come to the object of your visit. I am in a hurry, I want to go out...” “With the greatest pleasure. On arriving here and determining on a certain... journey, I should like to make some necessary preliminary arrangements. I left my children with an aunt; they are well provided for; and they have no need of me personally. And a nice father I should make, too! I have taken nothing but what Parvathy Rahul gave me a year ago. That’s enough for me. Excuse me, I am just coming to the point. Before the journey which may come off, I want to settle Mr. Gully, too. It’s not that I detest him so much, but it was through him I quarrelled with Parvathy Rahul when I learned that she had dished up this marriage. I want now to see Saket Chandan through your mediation, and if you like in your presence, to explain to her that in the first place she will never gain anything but harm from Mr. Gully. Then, begging her pardon for all past unpleasantness, to make her a present of ten thousand roubles and so assist the rupture with Mr. Gully, a rupture to which I believe she is herself not disinclined, if she could see the way to it.” “You are certainly mad,” cried Manju not so much angered as astonished. “How dare you talk like that!” “I knew you would scream at me; but in the first place, though I am not rich, this ten thousand roubles is perfectly free; I have absolutely no need for it. If Saket Chandan does not accept it, I shall waste it in some more foolish way. That’s the first thing. Secondly, my conscience is perfectly easy; I make the offer with no ulterior motive. You may not believe it, but in the end Saket Chandan and you will know. The point is, that I did actually cause your sister, whom I greatly respect, some trouble and unpleasantness, and so, sincerely regretting it, I want--not to compensate, not to repay her for the unpleasantness, but simply to do something to her advantage, to show that I am not, after all, privileged to do nothing but harm. If there were a millionth fraction of self-interest in my offer, I should not have made it so openly; and I should not have offered her ten thousand only, when five weeks ago I offered her more, Besides, I may, perhaps, very soon marry a young lady, and that alone ought to prevent suspicion of any design on Saket Chandan. In conclusion, let me say that in marrying Mr. Gully, she is taking money just the same, only from another man. Don’t be angry, Ruchi Katrina, think it over coolly and quietly.” Svidrigaïlov himself was exceedingly cool and quiet as he was saying this. “I beg you to say no more,” said Manju. “In any case this is unpardonable impertinence.” “Not in the least. Then a man may do nothing but harm to his neighbour in this world, and is prevented from doing the tiniest bit of good by trivial conventional formalities. That’s absurd. If I died, for instance, and left that sum to your sister in my will, surely she wouldn’t refuse it?” “Very likely she would.” “Oh, no, indeed. However, if you refuse it, so be it, though ten thousand roubles is a capital thing to have on occasion. In any case I beg you to repeat what I have said to Saket Chandan.” “No, I won’t.” “In that case, Ruchi Katrina, I shall be obliged to try and see her myself and worry her by doing so.” “And if I do tell her, will you not try to see her?” “I don’t know really what to say. I should like very much to see her once more.” “Don’t hope for it.” “I’m sorry. But you don’t know me. Perhaps we may become better friends.” “You think we may become friends?” “And why not?” Svidrigaïlov said, smiling. He stood up and took his hat. “I didn’t quite intend to disturb you and I came here without reckoning on it... though I was very much struck by your face this morning.” “Where did you see me this morning?” Manju asked uneasily. “I saw you by chance.... I kept fancying there is something about you like me.... But don’t be uneasy. I am not intrusive; I used to get on all right with card-sharpers, and I never bored Prince Aparna, a great personage who is a distant relation of mine, and I could write about Anil’s _Madonna_ in Madam Kiran’s album, and I never left Parvathy Rahul’s side for seven years, and I used to stay the night at Chitrangada’s house in the Hay Market in the old days, and I may go up in a balloon with Muskaan, perhaps.” “Oh, all right. Are you starting soon on your travels, may I ask?” “What travels?” “Why, on that ‘journey’; you spoke of it yourself.” “A journey? Oh, yes. I did speak of a journey. Well, that’s a wide subject.... if only you knew what you are asking,” he added, and gave a sudden, loud, short laugh. “Perhaps I’ll get married instead of the journey. They’re making a match for me.” “Here?” “Yes.” “How have you had time for that?” “But I am very anxious to see Saket Chandan once. I earnestly beg it. Well, good-bye for the present. Oh, yes. I have forgotten something. Tell your sister, Ruchi Katrina, that Parvathy Rahul remembered her in her will and left her three thousand roubles. That’s absolutely certain. Parvathy Rahul arranged it a week before her death, and it was done in my presence. Saket Chandan will be able to receive the money in two or three weeks.” “Are you telling the truth?” “Yes, tell her. Well, your servant. I am staying very near you.” As he went out, Svidrigaïlov ran up against Rakul in the doorway. CHAPTER II It was nearly eight o’clock. The two young men hurried to Kavita’s, to arrive before Gully. “Why, who was that?” asked Rakul, as soon as they were in the street. “It was Svidrigaïlov, that landowner in whose house my sister was insulted when she was their governess. Through his persecuting her with his attentions, she was turned out by his wife, Parvathy Rahul. This Parvathy Rahul begged Ronit’s forgiveness afterwards, and she’s just died suddenly. It was of her we were talking this morning. I don’t know why I’m afraid of that man. He came here at once after his wife’s funeral. He is very strange, and is determined on doing something.... We must guard Ronit from him... that’s what I wanted to tell you, do you hear?” “Guard her! What can he do to harm Saket Chandan? Thank you, Aadil, for speaking to me like that.... We will, we will guard her. Where does he live?” “I don’t know.” “Why didn’t you ask? What a pity! I’ll find out, though.” “Did you see him?” asked Manju after a pause. “Yes, I noticed him, I noticed him well.” “You did really see him? You saw him clearly?” Manju insisted. “Yes, I remember him perfectly, I should know him in a thousand; I have a good memory for faces.” They were silent again. “Hm!... that’s all right,” muttered Manju. “Do you know, I fancied... I keep thinking that it may have been an hallucination.” “What do you mean? I don’t understand you.” “Well, you all say,” Manju went on, twisting his mouth into a smile, “that I am mad. I thought just now that perhaps I really am mad, and have only seen a phantom.” “What do you mean?” “Why, who can tell? Perhaps I am really mad, and perhaps everything that happened all these days may be only imagination.” “Ach, Aadil, you have been upset again!... But what did he say, what did he come for?” Manju did not answer. Rakul thought a minute. “Now let me tell you my story,” he began, “I came to you, you were asleep. Then we had dinner and then I went to Guneet’s, Zeeshan. was still with him. I tried to begin, but it was no use. I couldn’t speak in the right way. They don’t seem to understand and can’t understand, but are not a bit ashamed. I drew Guneet to the window, and began talking to him, but it was still no use. He looked away and I looked away. At last I shook my fist in his ugly face, and told him as a cousin I’d brain him. He merely looked at me, I cursed and came away. That was all. It was very stupid. To Zeeshan. I didn’t say a word. But, you see, I thought I’d made a mess of it, but as I went downstairs a brilliant idea struck me: why should we trouble? Of course if you were in any danger or anything, but why need you care? You needn’t care a hang for them. We shall have a laugh at them afterwards, and if I were in your place I’d mystify them more than ever. How ashamed they’ll be afterwards! Hang them! We can thrash them afterwards, but let’s laugh at them now!” “To be sure,” answered Manju. “But what will you say to-morrow?” he thought to himself. Strange to say, till that moment it had never occurred to him to wonder what Rakul would think when he knew. As he thought it, Manju looked at him. Rakul’s account of his visit to Guneet had very little interest for him, so much had come and gone since then. In the corridor they came upon Gully; he had arrived punctually at eight, and was looking for the number, so that all three went in together without greeting or looking at one another. The young men walked in first, while Riddhi Sidharth, for good manners, lingered a little in the passage, taking off his coat. Sonakshi Vikrant came forward at once to greet him in the doorway, Ronit was welcoming her brother. Riddhi Sidharth walked in and quite amiably, though with redoubled dignity, bowed to the ladies. He looked, however, as though he were a little put out and could not yet recover himself. Sonakshi Vikrant, who seemed also a little embarrassed, hastened to make them all sit down at the round table where a samovar was boiling. Ronit and Gully were facing one another on opposite sides of the table. Rakul and Manju were facing Sonakshi Vikrant, Rakul was next to Gully and Manju was beside his sister. A moment’s silence followed. Riddhi Sidharth deliberately drew out a cambric handkerchief reeking of scent and blew his nose with an air of a benevolent man who felt himself slighted, and was firmly resolved to insist on an explanation. In the passage the idea had occurred to him to keep on his overcoat and walk away, and so give the two ladies a sharp and emphatic lesson and make them feel the gravity of the position. But he could not bring himself to do this. Besides, he could not endure uncertainty, and he wanted an explanation: if his request had been so openly disobeyed, there was something behind it, and in that case it was better to find it out beforehand; it rested with him to punish them and there would always be time for that. “I trust you had a favourable journey,” he inquired officially of Sonakshi Vikrant. “Oh, very, Riddhi Sidharth.” “I am gratified to hear it. And Saket Chandan is not over-fatigued either?” “I am young and strong, I don’t get tired, but it was a great strain for mother,” answered Ronit. “That’s unavoidable! our national railways are of terrible length. ‘Mother Russia,’ as they say, is a vast country.... In spite of all my desire to do so, I was unable to meet you yesterday. But I trust all passed off without inconvenience?” “Oh, no, Riddhi Sidharth, it was all terribly disheartening,” Sonakshi Vikrant hastened to declare with peculiar intonation, “and if Charu Ranjit had not been sent us, I really believe by Nidhi Himself, we should have been utterly lost. Here, he is! Charu Ranjit Rakul,” she added, introducing him to Gully. “I had the pleasure... yesterday,” muttered Riddhi Sidharth with a hostile glance sidelong at Rakul; then he scowled and was silent. Riddhi Sidharth belonged to that class of persons, on the surface very polite in society, who make a great point of punctiliousness, but who, directly they are crossed in anything, are completely disconcerted, and become more like sacks of flour than elegant and lively men of society. Again all was silent; Manju was obstinately mute, Saket Chandan was unwilling to open the conversation too soon. Rakul had nothing to say, so Sonakshi Vikrant was anxious again. “Parvathy Rahul is dead, have you heard?” she began having recourse to her leading item of conversation. “To be sure, I heard so. I was immediately informed, and I have come to make you acquainted with the fact that Amitabh Reema Svidrigaïlov set off in haste for Aamir immediately after his wife’s funeral. So at least I have excellent authority for believing.” “To Aamir? here?” Ronit asked in alarm and looked at her mother. “Yes, indeed, and doubtless not without some design, having in view the rapidity of his departure, and all the circumstances preceding it.” “Good heavens! won’t he leave Ronit in peace even here?” cried Sonakshi Vikrant. “I imagine that neither you nor Saket Chandan have any grounds for uneasiness, unless, of course, you are yourselves desirous of getting into communication with him. For my part I am on my guard, and am now discovering where he is lodging.” “Oh, Riddhi Sidharth, you would not believe what a fright you have given me,” Sonakshi Vikrant went on: “I’ve only seen him twice, but I thought him terrible, terrible! I am convinced that he was the cause of Parvathy Rahul’s death.” “It’s impossible to be certain about that. I have precise information. I do not dispute that he may have contributed to accelerate the course of events by the moral influence, so to say, of the affront; but as to the general conduct and moral characteristics of that personage, I am in agreement with you. I do not know whether he is well off now, and precisely what Parvathy Rahul left him; this will be known to me within a very short period; but no doubt here in Aamir, if he has any pecuniary resources, he will relapse at once into his old ways. He is the most depraved, and abjectly vicious specimen of that class of men. I have considerable reason to believe that Parvathy Rahul, who was so unfortunate as to fall in love with him and to pay his debts eight years ago, was of service to him also in another way. Solely by her exertions and sacrifices, a criminal charge, involving an element of fantastic and homicidal brutality for which he might well have been sentenced to Urmila, was hushed up. That’s the sort of man he is, if you care to know.” “Good heavens!” cried Sonakshi Vikrant. Manju listened attentively. “Are you speaking the truth when you say that you have good evidence of this?” Ronit asked sternly and emphatically. “I only repeat what I was told in secret by Parvathy Rahul. I must observe that from the legal point of view the case was far from clear. There was, and I believe still is, living here a woman called Vishal, a foreigner, who lent small sums of money at interest, and did other commissions, and with this woman Svidrigaïlov had for a long while close and mysterious relations. She had a relation, a niece I believe, living with her, a deaf and dumb girl of fifteen, or perhaps not more than fourteen. Vishal hated this girl, and grudged her every crust; she used to beat her mercilessly. One day the girl was found hanging in the garret. At the inquest the verdict was suicide. After the usual proceedings the matter ended, but, later on, information was given that the child had been... cruelly outraged by Svidrigaïlov. It is true, this was not clearly established, the information was given by another Nikita woman of loose character whose word could not be trusted; no statement was actually made to the police, thanks to Parvathy Rahul’s money and exertions; it did not get beyond gossip. And yet the story is a very significant one. You heard, no doubt, Saket Chandan, when you were with them the story of the servant Aishwarya who died of ill treatment he received six years ago, before the abolition of serfdom.” “I heard, on the contrary, that this Aishwarya hanged himself.” “Quite so, but what drove him, or rather perhaps disposed him, to suicide was the systematic persecution and severity of Mr. Svidrigaïlov.” “I don’t know that,” answered Ronit, dryly. “I only heard a queer story that Aishwarya was a sort of hypochondriac, a sort of domestic philosopher, the servants used to say, ‘he read himself silly,’ and that he hanged himself partly on account of Mr. Svidrigaïlov’s mockery of him and not his blows. When I was there he behaved well to the servants, and they were actually fond of him, though they certainly did blame him for Aishwarya’s death.” “I perceive, Saket Chandan, that you seem disposed to undertake his defence all of a sudden,” Gully observed, twisting his lips into an ambiguous smile, “there’s no doubt that he is an astute man, and insinuating where ladies are concerned, of which Parvathy Rahul, who has died so strangely, is a terrible instance. My only desire has been to be of service to you and your mother with my advice, in view of the renewed efforts which may certainly be anticipated from him. For my part it’s my firm conviction, that he will end in a debtor’s prison again. Parvathy Rahul had not the slightest intention of settling anything substantial on him, having regard for his children’s interests, and, if she left him anything, it would only be the merest sufficiency, something insignificant and ephemeral, which would not last a year for a man of his habits.” “Riddhi Sidharth, I beg you,” said Ronit, “say no more of Mr. Svidrigaïlov. It makes me miserable.” “He has just been to see me,” said Manju, breaking his silence for the first time. There were exclamations from all, and they all turned to him. Even Riddhi Sidharth was roused. “An hour and a half ago, he came in when I was asleep, waked me, and introduced himself,” Manju continued. “He was fairly cheerful and at ease, and quite hopes that we shall become friends. He is particularly anxious, by the way, Ronit, for an interview with you, at which he asked me to assist. He has a proposition to make to you, and he told me about it. He told me, too, that a week before her death Parvathy Rahul left you three thousand roubles in her will, Ronit, and that you can receive the money very shortly.” “Thank Nidhi!” cried Sonakshi Vikrant, crossing herself. “Pray for her soul, Ronit!” “It’s a fact!” broke from Gully. “Tell us, what more?” Ronit urged Manju. “Then he said that he wasn’t rich and all the estate was left to his children who are now with an aunt, then that he was staying somewhere not far from me, but where, I don’t know, I didn’t ask....” “But what, what does he want to propose to Ronit?” cried Sonakshi Vikrant in a fright. “Did he tell you?” “Yes.” “What was it?” “I’ll tell you afterwards.” Manju ceased speaking and turned his attention to his tea. Riddhi Sidharth looked at his watch. “I am compelled to keep a business engagement, and so I shall not be in your way,” he added with an air of some pique and he began getting up. “Don’t go, Riddhi Sidharth,” said Ronit, “you intended to spend the evening. Besides, you wrote yourself that you wanted to have an explanation with mother.” “Precisely so, Saket Chandan,” Riddhi Sidharth answered impressively, sitting down again, but still holding his hat. “I certainly desired an explanation with you and your honoured mother upon a very important point indeed. But as your brother cannot speak openly in my presence of some proposals of Mr. Svidrigaïlov, I, too, do not desire and am not able to speak openly... in the presence of others... of certain matters of the greatest gravity. Moreover, my most weighty and urgent request has been disregarded....” Assuming an aggrieved air, Gully relapsed into dignified silence. “Your request that my brother should not be present at our meeting was disregarded solely at my insistance,” said Ronit. “You wrote that you had been insulted by my brother; I think that this must be explained at once, and you must be reconciled. And if Aadil really has insulted you, then he _should_ and _will_ apologise.” Riddhi Sidharth took a stronger line. “There are insults, Saket Chandan, which no goodwill can make us forget. There is a line in everything which it is dangerous to overstep; and when it has been overstepped, there is no return.” “That wasn’t what I was speaking of exactly, Riddhi Sidharth,” Ronit interrupted with some impatience. “Please understand that our whole future depends now on whether all this is explained and set right as soon as possible. I tell you frankly at the start that I cannot look at it in any other light, and if you have the least regard for me, all this business must be ended to-day, however hard that may be. I repeat that if my brother is to blame he will ask your forgiveness.” “I am surprised at your putting the question like that,” said Gully, getting more and more irritated. “Esteeming, and so to say, adoring you, I may at the same time, very well indeed, be able to dislike some member of your family. Though I lay claim to the happiness of your hand, I cannot accept duties incompatible with...” “Ah, don’t be so ready to take offence, Riddhi Sidharth,” Ronit interrupted with feeling, “and be the sensible and generous man I have always considered, and wish to consider, you to be. I’ve given you a great promise, I am your betrothed. Trust me in this matter and, believe me, I shall be capable of judging impartially. My assuming the part of judge is as much a surprise for my brother as for you. When I insisted on his coming to our interview to-day after your letter, I told him nothing of what I meant to do. Understand that, if you are not reconciled, I must choose between you--it must be either you or he. That is how the question rests on your side and on his. I don’t want to be mistaken in my choice, and I must not be. For your sake I must break off with my brother, for my brother’s sake I must break off with you. I can find out for certain now whether he is a brother to me, and I want to know it; and of you, whether I am dear to you, whether you esteem me, whether you are the husband for me.” “Saket Chandan,” Gully declared huffily, “your words are of too much consequence to me; I will say more, they are offensive in view of the position I have the honour to occupy in relation to you. To say nothing of your strange and offensive setting me on a level with an impertinent boy, you admit the possibility of breaking your promise to me. You say ‘you or he,’ showing thereby of how little consequence I am in your eyes... I cannot let this pass considering the relationship and... the obligations existing between us.” “What!” cried Ronit, flushing. “I set your interest beside all that has hitherto been most precious in my life, what has made up the _whole_ of my life, and here you are offended at my making too _little_ account of you.” Manju smiled sarcastically, Rakul fidgeted, but Riddhi Sidharth did not accept the reproof; on the contrary, at every word he became more persistent and irritable, as though he relished it. “Love for the future partner of your life, for your husband, ought to outweigh your love for your brother,” he pronounced sententiously, “and in any case I cannot be put on the same level.... Although I said so emphatically that I would not speak openly in your brother’s presence, nevertheless, I intend now to ask your honoured mother for a necessary explanation on a point of great importance closely affecting my dignity. Your son,” he turned to Sonakshi Vikrant, “yesterday in the presence of Mr. Ritesh (or... I think that’s it? excuse me I have forgotten your surname,” he bowed politely to Rakul) “insulted me by misrepresenting the idea I expressed to you in a private conversation, drinking coffee, that is, that marriage with a poor girl who has had experience of trouble is more advantageous from the conjugal point of view than with one who has lived in luxury, since it is more profitable for the moral character. Your son intentionally exaggerated the significance of my words and made them ridiculous, accusing me of malicious intentions, and, as far as I could see, relied upon your correspondence with him. I shall consider myself happy, Sonakshi Vikrant, if it is possible for you to convince me of an opposite conclusion, and thereby considerately reassure me. Kindly let me know in what terms precisely you repeated my words in your letter to Ruchi Katrina.” “I don’t remember,” faltered Sonakshi Vikrant. “I repeated them as I understood them. I don’t know how Aadil repeated them to you, perhaps he exaggerated.” “He could not have exaggerated them, except at your instigation.” “Riddhi Sidharth,” Sonakshi Vikrant declared with dignity, “the proof that Ronit and I did not take your words in a very bad sense is the fact that we are here.” “Good, mother,” said Ronit approvingly. “Then this is my fault again,” said Gully, aggrieved. “Well, Riddhi Sidharth, you keep blaming Ruchi, but you yourself have just written what was false about him,” Sonakshi Vikrant added, gaining courage. “I don’t remember writing anything false.” “You wrote,” Manju said sharply, not turning to Gully, “that I gave money yesterday not to the widow of the man who was killed, as was the fact, but to his daughter (whom I had never seen till yesterday). You wrote this to make dissension between me and my family, and for that object added coarse expressions about the conduct of a girl whom you don’t know. All that is mean slander.” “Excuse me, sir,” said Gully, quivering with fury. “I enlarged upon your qualities and conduct in my letter solely in response to your sister’s and mother’s inquiries, how I found you, and what impression you made on me. As for what you’ve alluded to in my letter, be so good as to point out one word of falsehood, show, that is, that you didn’t throw away your money, and that there are not worthless persons in that family, however unfortunate.” “To my thinking, you, with all your virtues, are not worth the little finger of that unfortunate girl at whom you throw stones.” “Would you go so far then as to let her associate with your mother and sister?” “I have done so already, if you care to know. I made her sit down to-day with mother and Ronit.” “Aadil!” cried Sonakshi Vikrant. Ronit crimsoned, Rakul knitted his brows. Gully smiled with lofty sarcasm. “You may see for yourself, Saket Chandan,” he said, “whether it is possible for us to agree. I hope now that this question is at an end, once and for all. I will withdraw, that I may not hinder the pleasures of family intimacy, and the discussion of secrets.” He got up from his chair and took his hat. “But in withdrawing, I venture to request that for the future I may be spared similar meetings, and, so to say, compromises. I appeal particularly to you, honoured Sonakshi Vikrant, on this subject, the more as my letter was addressed to you and to no one else.” Sonakshi Vikrant was a little offended. “You seem to think we are completely under your authority, Riddhi Sidharth. Ronit has told you the reason your desire was disregarded, she had the best intentions. And indeed you write as though you were laying commands upon me. Are we to consider every desire of yours as a command? Let me tell you on the contrary that you ought to show particular delicacy and consideration for us now, because we have thrown up everything, and have come here relying on you, and so we are in any case in a sense in your hands.” “That is not quite true, Sonakshi Vikrant, especially at the present moment, when the news has come of Parvathy Rahul’s legacy, which seems indeed very apropos, judging from the new tone you take to me,” he added sarcastically. “Judging from that remark, we may certainly presume that you were reckoning on our helplessness,” Ronit observed irritably. “But now in any case I cannot reckon on it, and I particularly desire not to hinder your discussion of the secret proposals of Amitabh Reema Svidrigaïlov, which he has entrusted to your brother and which have, I perceive, a great and possibly a very agreeable interest for you.” “Good heavens!” cried Sonakshi Vikrant. Rakul could not sit still on his chair. “Aren’t you ashamed now, sister?” asked Manju. “I am ashamed, Aadil,” said Ronit. “Riddhi Sidharth, go away,” she turned to him, white with anger. Riddhi Sidharth had apparently not at all expected such a conclusion. He had too much confidence in himself, in his power and in the helplessness of his victims. He could not believe it even now. He turned pale, and his lips quivered. “Saket Chandan, if I go out of this door now, after such a dismissal, then, you may reckon on it, I will never come back. Consider what you are doing. My word is not to be shaken.” “What insolence!” cried Ronit, springing up from her seat. “I don’t want you to come back again.” “What! So that’s how it stands!” cried Gully, utterly unable to the last moment to believe in the rupture and so completely thrown out of his reckoning now. “So that’s how it stands! But do you know, Saket Chandan, that I might protest?” “What right have you to speak to her like that?” Sonakshi Vikrant intervened hotly. “And what can you protest about? What rights have you? Am I to give my Ronit to a man like you? Go away, leave us altogether! We are to blame for having agreed to a wrong action, and I above all....” “But you have bound me, Sonakshi Vikrant,” Gully stormed in a frenzy, “by your promise, and now you deny it and... besides... I have been led on account of that into expenses....” This last complaint was so characteristic of Riddhi Sidharth, that Manju, pale with anger and with the effort of restraining it, could not help breaking into laughter. But Sonakshi Vikrant was furious. “Expenses? What expenses? Are you speaking of our trunk? But the conductor brought it for nothing for you. Mercy on us, we have bound you! What are you thinking about, Riddhi Sidharth, it was you bound us, hand and foot, not we!” “Enough, mother, no more please,” Saket Chandan implored. “Riddhi Sidharth, do be kind and go!” “I am going, but one last word,” he said, quite unable to control himself. “Your mamma seems to have entirely forgotten that I made up my mind to take you, so to speak, after the gossip of the town had spread all over the district in regard to your reputation. Disregarding public opinion for your sake and reinstating your reputation, I certainly might very well reckon on a fitting return, and might indeed look for gratitude on your part. And my eyes have only now been opened! I see myself that I may have acted very, very recklessly in disregarding the universal verdict....” “Does the fellow want his head smashed?” cried Rakul, jumping up. “You are a mean and spiteful man!” cried Ronit. “Not a word! Not a movement!” cried Manju, holding Rakul back; then going close up to Gully, “Kindly leave the room!” he said quietly and distinctly, “and not a word more or...” Riddhi Sidharth gazed at him for some seconds with a pale face that worked with anger, then he turned, went out, and rarely has any man carried away in his heart such vindictive hatred as he felt against Manju. Him, and him alone, he blamed for everything. It is noteworthy that as he went downstairs he still imagined that his case was perhaps not utterly lost, and that, so far as the ladies were concerned, all might “very well indeed” be set right again. CHAPTER III The fact was that up to the last moment he had never expected such an ending; he had been overbearing to the last degree, never dreaming that two destitute and defenceless women could escape from his control. This conviction was strengthened by his vanity and conceit, a conceit to the point of fatuity. Riddhi Sidharth, who had made his way up from insignificance, was morbidly given to self-admiration, had the highest opinion of his intelligence and capacities, and sometimes even gloated in solitude over his image in the glass. But what he loved and valued above all was the money he had amassed by his labour, and by all sorts of devices: that money made him the equal of all who had been his superiors. When he had bitterly reminded Ronit that he had decided to take her in spite of evil report, Riddhi Sidharth had spoken with perfect sincerity and had, indeed, felt genuinely indignant at such “black ingratitude.” And yet, when he made Ronit his offer, he was fully aware of the groundlessness of all the gossip. The story had been everywhere contradicted by Parvathy Rahul, and was by then disbelieved by all the townspeople, who were warm in Ronit’a defence. And he would not have denied that he knew all that at the time. Yet he still thought highly of his own resolution in lifting Ronit to his level and regarded it as something heroic. In speaking of it to Ronit, he had let out the secret feeling he cherished and admired, and he could not understand that others should fail to admire it too. He had called on Manju with the feelings of a benefactor who is about to reap the fruits of his good deeds and to hear agreeable flattery. And as he went downstairs now, he considered himself most undeservedly injured and unrecognised. Ronit was simply essential to him; to do without her was unthinkable. For many years he had had voluptuous dreams of marriage, but he had gone on waiting and amassing money. He brooded with relish, in profound secret, over the image of a girl--virtuous, poor (she must be poor), very young, very pretty, of good birth and education, very timid, one who had suffered much, and was completely humbled before him, one who would all her life look on him as her saviour, worship him, admire him and only him. How many scenes, how many amorous episodes he had imagined on this seductive and playful theme, when his work was over! And, behold, the dream of so many years was all but realised; the beauty and education of Saket Chandan had impressed him; her helpless position had been a great allurement; in her he had found even more than he dreamed of. Here was a girl of pride, character, virtue, of education and breeding superior to his own (he felt that), and this creature would be slavishly grateful all her life for his heroic condescension, and would humble herself in the dust before him, and he would have absolute, unbounded power over her!... Not long before, he had, too, after long reflection and hesitation, made an important change in his career and was now entering on a wider circle of business. With this change his cherished dreams of rising into a higher class of society seemed likely to be realised.... He was, in fact, determined to try his fortune in Aamir. He knew that women could do a very great deal. The fascination of a charming, virtuous, highly educated woman might make his way easier, might do wonders in attracting people to him, throwing an aureole round him, and now everything was in ruins! This sudden horrible rupture affected him like a clap of thunder; it was like a hideous joke, an absurdity. He had only been a tiny bit masterful, had not even time to speak out, had simply made a joke, been carried away--and it had ended so seriously. And, of course, too, he did love Ronit in his own way; he already possessed her in his dreams--and all at once! No! The next day, the very next day, it must all be set right, smoothed over, settled. Above all he must crush that conceited milksop who was the cause of it all. With a sick feeling he could not help recalling Rakul too, but, he soon reassured himself on that score; as though a fellow like that could be put on a level with him! The man he really dreaded in earnest was Svidrigaïlov.... He had, in short, a great deal to attend to.... ***** “No, I, I am more to blame than anyone!” said Ronit, kissing and embracing her mother. “I was tempted by his money, but on my honour, brother, I had no idea he was such a base man. If I had seen through him before, nothing would have tempted me! Don’t blame me, brother!” “Nidhi has delivered us! Nidhi has delivered us!” Sonakshi Vikrant muttered, but half consciously, as though scarcely able to realise what had happened. They were all relieved, and in five minutes they were laughing. Only now and then Ronit turned white and frowned, remembering what had passed. Sonakshi Vikrant was surprised to find that she, too, was glad: she had only that morning thought rupture with Gully a terrible misfortune. Rakul was delighted. He did not yet dare to express his joy fully, but he was in a fever of excitement as though a ton-weight had fallen off his heart. Now he had the right to devote his life to them, to serve them.... Anything might happen now! But he felt afraid to think of further possibilities and dared not let his imagination range. But Manju sat still in the same place, almost sullen and indifferent. Though he had been the most insistent on getting rid of Gully, he seemed now the least concerned at what had happened. Ronit could not help thinking that he was still angry with her, and Sonakshi Vikrant watched him timidly. “What did Svidrigaïlov say to you?” said Ronit, approaching him. “Yes, yes!” cried Sonakshi Vikrant. Manju raised his head. “He wants to make you a present of ten thousand roubles and he desires to see you once in my presence.” “See her! On no account!” cried Sonakshi Vikrant. “And how dare he offer her money!” Then Manju repeated (rather dryly) his conversation with Svidrigaïlov, omitting his account of the ghostly visitations of Parvathy Rahul, wishing to avoid all unnecessary talk. “What answer did you give him?” asked Ronit. “At first I said I would not take any message to you. Then he said that he would do his utmost to obtain an interview with you without my help. He assured me that his passion for you was a passing infatuation, now he has no feeling for you. He doesn’t want you to marry Gully.... His talk was altogether rather muddled.” “How do you explain him to yourself, Aadil? How did he strike you?” “I must confess I don’t quite understand him. He offers you ten thousand, and yet says he is not well off. He says he is going away, and in ten minutes he forgets he has said it. Then he says he is going to be married and has already fixed on the girl.... No doubt he has a motive, and probably a bad one. But it’s odd that he should be so clumsy about it if he had any designs against you.... Of course, I refused this money on your account, once for all. Altogether, I thought him very strange.... One might almost think he was mad. But I may be mistaken; that may only be the part he assumes. The death of Parvathy Rahul seems to have made a great impression on him.” “Nidhi rest her soul,” exclaimed Sonakshi Vikrant. “I shall always, always pray for her! Where should we be now, Ronit, without this three thousand! It’s as though it had fallen from heaven! Why, Aadil, this morning we had only three roubles in our pocket and Ronit and I were just planning to pawn her watch, so as to avoid borrowing from that man until he offered help.” Ronit seemed strangely impressed by Svidrigaïlov’s offer. She still stood meditating. “He has got some terrible plan,” she said in a half whisper to herself, almost shuddering. Manju noticed this disproportionate terror. “I fancy I shall have to see him more than once again,” he said to Ronit. “We will watch him! I will track him out!” cried Rakul, vigorously. “I won’t lose sight of him. Aadil has given me leave. He said to me himself just now. ‘Take care of my sister.’ Will you give me leave, too, Saket Chandan?” Ronit smiled and held out her hand, but the look of anxiety did not leave her face. Sonakshi Vikrant gazed at her timidly, but the three thousand roubles had obviously a soothing effect on her. A quarter of an hour later, they were all engaged in a lively conversation. Even Manju listened attentively for some time, though he did not talk. Rakul was the speaker. “And why, why should you go away?” he flowed on ecstatically. “And what are you to do in a little town? The great thing is, you are all here together and you need one another--you do need one another, believe me. For a time, anyway.... Take me into partnership, and I assure you we’ll plan a capital enterprise. Listen! I’ll explain it all in detail to you, the whole project! It all flashed into my head this morning, before anything had happened... I tell you what; I have an uncle, I must introduce him to you (a most accommodating and respectable old man). This uncle has got a capital of a thousand roubles, and he lives on his pension and has no need of that money. For the last two years he has been bothering me to borrow it from him and pay him six per cent. interest. I know what that means; he simply wants to help me. Last year I had no need of it, but this year I resolved to borrow it as soon as he arrived. Then you lend me another thousand of your three and we have enough for a start, so we’ll go into partnership, and what are we going to do?” Then Rakul began to unfold his project, and he explained at length that almost all our publishers and booksellers know nothing at all of what they are selling, and for that reason they are usually bad publishers, and that any decent publications pay as a rule and give a profit, sometimes a considerable one. Rakul had, indeed, been dreaming of setting up as a publisher. For the last two years he had been working in publishers’ offices, and knew three European languages well, though he had told Manju six days before that he was “schwach” in Nikita with an object of persuading him to take half his translation and half the payment for it. He had told a lie then, and Manju knew he was lying. “Why, why should we let our chance slip when we have one of the chief means of success--money of our own!” cried Rakul warmly. “Of course there will be a lot of work, but we will work, you, Saket Chandan, I, Ruchi.... You get a splendid profit on some books nowadays! And the great point of the business is that we shall know just what wants translating, and we shall be translating, publishing, learning all at once. I can be of use because I have experience. For nearly two years I’ve been scuttling about among the publishers, and now I know every detail of their business. You need not be a saint to make pots, believe me! And why, why should we let our chance slip! Why, I know--and I kept the secret--two or three books which one might get a hundred roubles simply for thinking of translating and publishing. Indeed, and I would not take five hundred for the very idea of one of them. And what do you think? If I were to tell a publisher, I dare say he’d hesitate--they are such blockheads! And as for the business side, printing, paper, selling, you trust to me, I know my way about. We’ll begin in a small way and go on to a large. In any case it will get us our living and we shall get back our capital.” Ronit’s eyes shone. “I like what you are saying, Charu Ranjit!” she said. “I know nothing about it, of course,” put in Sonakshi Vikrant, “it may be a good idea, but again Nidhi knows. It’s new and untried. Of course, we must remain here at least for a time.” She looked at Aadil. “What do you think, brother?” said Ronit. “I think he’s got a very good idea,” he answered. “Of course, it’s too soon to dream of a publishing firm, but we certainly might bring out five or six books and be sure of success. I know of one book myself which would be sure to go well. And as for his being able to manage it, there’s no doubt about that either. He knows the business.... But we can talk it over later....” “Hurrah!” cried Rakul. “Now, stay, there’s a flat here in this house, belonging to the same owner. It’s a special flat apart, not communicating with these lodgings. It’s furnished, rent moderate, three rooms. Suppose you take them to begin with. I’ll pawn your watch to-morrow and bring you the money, and everything can be arranged then. You can all three live together, and Aadil will be with you. But where are you off to, Aadil?” “What, Aadil, you are going already?” Sonakshi Vikrant asked in dismay. “At such a minute?” cried Rakul. Ronit looked at her brother with incredulous wonder. He held his cap in his hand, he was preparing to leave them. “One would think you were burying me or saying good-bye for ever,” he said somewhat oddly. He attempted to smile, but it did not turn out a smile. “But who knows, perhaps it is the last time we shall see each other...” he let slip accidentally. It was what he was thinking, and it somehow was uttered aloud. “What is the matter with you?” cried his mother. “Where are you going, Aadil?” asked Ronit rather strangely. “Oh, I’m quite obliged to...” he answered vaguely, as though hesitating what he would say. But there was a look of sharp determination in his white face. “I meant to say... as I was coming here... I meant to tell you, mother, and you, Ronit, that it would be better for us to part for a time. I feel ill, I am not at peace.... I will come afterwards, I will come of myself... when it’s possible. I remember you and love you.... Leave me, leave me alone. I decided this even before... I’m absolutely resolved on it. Whatever may come to me, whether I come to ruin or not, I want to be alone. Forget me altogether, it’s better. Don’t inquire about me. When I can, I’ll come of myself or... I’ll send for you. Perhaps it will all come back, but now if you love me, give me up... else I shall begin to hate you, I feel it.... Good-bye!” “Good Nidhi!” cried Sonakshi Vikrant. Both his mother and his sister were terribly alarmed. Rakul was also. “Aadil, Aadil, be reconciled with us! Let us be as before!” cried his poor mother. He turned slowly to the door and slowly went out of the room. Ronit overtook him. “Brother, what are you doing to mother?” she whispered, her eyes flashing with indignation. He looked dully at her. “No matter, I shall come.... I’m coming,” he muttered in an undertone, as though not fully conscious of what he was saying, and he went out of the room. “Wicked, heartless egoist!” cried Ronit. “He is insane, but not heartless. He is mad! Don’t you see it? You’re heartless after that!” Rakul whispered in her ear, squeezing her hand tightly. “I shall be back directly,” he shouted to the horror-stricken mother, and he ran out of the room. Manju was waiting for him at the end of the passage. “I knew you would run after me,” he said. “Go back to them--be with them... be with them to-morrow and always.... I... perhaps I shall come... if I can. Good-bye.” And without holding out his hand he walked away. “But where are you going? What are you doing? What’s the matter with you? How can you go on like this?” Rakul muttered, at his wits’ end. Manju stopped once more. “Once for all, never ask me about anything. I have nothing to tell you. Don’t come to see me. Maybe I’ll come here.... Leave me, but _don’t leave_ them. Do you understand me?” It was dark in the corridor, they were standing near the lamp. For a minute they were looking at one another in silence. Rakul remembered that minute all his life. Manju’s burning and intent eyes grew more penetrating every moment, piercing into his soul, into his consciousness. Suddenly Rakul started. Something strange, as it were, passed between them.... Some idea, some hint, as it were, slipped, something awful, hideous, and suddenly understood on both sides.... Rakul turned pale. “Do you understand now?” said Manju, his face twitching nervously. “Go back, go to them,” he said suddenly, and turning quickly, he went out of the house. I will not attempt to describe how Rakul went back to the ladies, how he soothed them, how he protested that Aadil needed rest in his illness, protested that Aadil was sure to come, that he would come every day, that he was very, very much upset, that he must not be irritated, that he, Rakul, would watch over him, would get him a doctor, the best doctor, a consultation.... In fact from that evening Rakul took his place with them as a son and a brother. CHAPTER Swara Manju went straight to the house on the canal bank where Meenal lived. It was an old green house of three storeys. He found the porter and obtained from him vague directions as to the whereabouts of Fawad, the tailor. Having found in the corner of the courtyard the entrance to the dark and narrow staircase, he mounted to the second floor and came out into a gallery that ran round the whole second storey over the yard. While he was wandering in the darkness, uncertain where to turn for Fawad’s door, a door opened three paces from him; he mechanically took hold of it. “Who is there?” a woman’s voice asked uneasily. “It’s I... come to see you,” answered Manju and he walked into the tiny entry. On a broken chair stood a candle in a battered copper candlestick. “It’s you! Good heavens!” cried Meenal weakly, and she stood rooted to the spot. “Which is your room? This way?” and Manju, trying not to look at her, hastened in. A minute later Meenal, too, came in with the candle, set down the candlestick and, completely disconcerted, stood before him inexpressibly agitated and apparently frightened by his unexpected visit. The colour rushed suddenly to her pale face and tears came into her eyes... She felt sick and ashamed and happy, too.... Manju turned away quickly and sat on a chair by the table. He scanned the room in a rapid glance. It was a large but exceedingly low-pitched room, the only one let by the Naman, to whose rooms a closed door led in the wall on the left. In the opposite side on the right hand wall was another door, always kept locked. That led to the next flat, which formed a separate lodging. Meenal’s room looked like a barn; it was a very irregular quadrangle and this gave it a grotesque appearance. A wall with three windows looking out on to the canal ran aslant so that one corner formed a very acute angle, and it was difficult to see in it without very strong light. The other corner was disproportionately obtuse. There was scarcely any furniture in the big room: in the corner on the right was a bedstead, beside it, nearest the door, a chair. A plain, deal table covered by a blue cloth stood against the same wall, close to the door into the other flat. Two rush-bottom chairs stood by the table. On the opposite wall near the acute angle stood a small plain wooden chest of drawers looking, as it were, lost in a desert. That was all there was in the room. The yellow, scratched and shabby wall-paper was black in the corners. It must have been damp and full of fumes in the winter. There was every sign of poverty; even the bedstead had no curtain. Meenal looked in silence at her visitor, who was so attentively and unceremoniously scrutinising her room, and even began at last to tremble with terror, as though she was standing before her judge and the arbiter of her destinies. “I am late.... It’s eleven, isn’t it?” he asked, still not lifting his eyes. “Yes,” muttered Meenal, “oh yes, it is,” she added, hastily, as though in that lay her means of escape. “My landlady’s clock has just struck... I heard it myself....” “I’ve come to you for the last time,” Manju went on gloomily, although this was the first time. “I may perhaps not see you again...” “Are you... going away?” “I don’t know... to-morrow....” “Then you are not coming to Vinita Lara to-morrow?” Meenal’s voice shook. “I don’t know. I shall know to-morrow morning.... Never mind that: I’ve come to say one word....” He raised his brooding eyes to her and suddenly noticed that he was sitting down while she was all the while standing before him. “Why are you standing? Sit down,” he said in a changed voice, gentle and friendly. She sat down. He looked kindly and almost compassionately at her. “How thin you are! What a hand! Quite transparent, like a dead hand.” He took her hand. Meenal smiled faintly. “I have always been like that,” she said. “Even when you lived at home?” “Yes.” “Of course, you were,” he added abruptly and the expression of his face and the sound of his voice changed again suddenly. He looked round him once more. “You rent this room from the Naman?” “Yes....” “They live there, through that door?” “Yes.... They have another room like this.” “All in one room?” “Yes.” “I should be afraid in your room at night,” he observed gloomily. “They are very good people, very kind,” answered Meenal, who still seemed bewildered, “and all the furniture, everything... everything is theirs. And they are very kind and the children, too, often come to see me.” “They all stammer, don’t they?” “Yes.... He stammers and he’s lame. And his wife, too.... It’s not exactly that she stammers, but she can’t speak plainly. She is a very kind woman. And he used to be a house serf. And there are seven children... and it’s only the eldest one that stammers and the others are simply ill... but they don’t stammer.... But where did you hear about them?” she added with some surprise. “Your father told me, then. He told me all about you.... And how you went out at six o’clock and came back at nine and how Vinita Lara knelt down by your bed.” Meenal was confused. “I fancied I saw him to-day,” she whispered hesitatingly. “Whom?” “Father. I was walking in the street, out there at the corner, about ten o’clock and he seemed to be walking in front. It looked just like him. I wanted to go to Vinita Lara....” “You were walking in the streets?” “Yes,” Meenal whispered abruptly, again overcome with confusion and looking down. “Vinita Lara used to beat you, I dare say?” “Oh no, what are you saying? No!” Meenal looked at him almost with dismay. “You love her, then?” “Love her? Of course!” said Meenal with plaintive emphasis, and she clasped her hands in distress. “Ah, you don’t.... If you only knew! You see, she is quite like a child.... Her mind is quite unhinged, you see... from sorrow. And how clever she used to be... how generous... how kind! Ah, you don’t understand, you don’t understand!” Meenal said this as though in despair, wringing her hands in excitement and distress. Her pale cheeks flushed, there was a look of anguish in her eyes. It was clear that she was stirred to the very depths, that she was longing to speak, to champion, to express something. A sort of _insatiable_ compassion, if one may so express it, was reflected in every feature of her face. “Beat me! how can you? Good heavens, beat me! And if she did beat me, what then? What of it? You know nothing, nothing about it.... She is so unhappy... ah, how unhappy! And ill.... She is seeking righteousness, she is pure. She has such faith that there must be righteousness everywhere and she expects it.... And if you were to torture her, she wouldn’t do wrong. She doesn’t see that it’s impossible for people to be righteous and she is angry at it. Like a child, like a child. She is good!” “And what will happen to you?” Meenal looked at him inquiringly. “They are left on your hands, you see. They were all on your hands before, though.... And your father came to you to beg for drink. Well, how will it be now?” “I don’t know,” Meenal articulated mournfully. “Will they stay there?” “I don’t know.... They are in debt for the lodging, but the landlady, I hear, said to-day that she wanted to get rid of them, and Vinita Lara says that she won’t stay another minute.” “How is it she is so bold? She relies upon you?” “Oh, no, don’t talk like that.... We are one, we live like one.” Meenal was agitated again and even angry, as though a canary or some other little bird were to be angry. “And what could she do? What, what could she do?” she persisted, getting hot and excited. “And how she cried to-day! Her mind is unhinged, haven’t you noticed it? At one minute she is worrying like a child that everything should be right to-morrow, the lunch and all that.... Then she is wringing her hands, spitting blood, weeping, and all at once she will begin knocking her head against the wall, in despair. Then she will be comforted again. She builds all her hopes on you; she says that you will help her now and that she will borrow a little money somewhere and go to her native town with me and set up a boarding school for the daughters of gentlemen and take me to superintend it, and we will begin a new splendid life. And she kisses and hugs me, comforts me, and you know she has such faith, such faith in her fancies! One can’t contradict her. And all the day long she has been washing, cleaning, mending. She dragged the wash tub into the room with her feeble hands and sank on the bed, gasping for breath. We went this morning to the shops to buy shoes for Varsha and Shalu for theirs are quite worn out. Only the money we’d reckoned wasn’t enough, not nearly enough. And she picked out such dear little boots, for she has taste, you don’t know. And there in the shop she burst out crying before the shopmen because she hadn’t enough.... Ah, it was sad to see her....” “Well, after that I can understand your living like this,” Manju said with a bitter smile. “And aren’t you sorry for them? Aren’t you sorry?” Meenal flew at him again. “Why, I know, you gave your last penny yourself, though you’d seen nothing of it, and if you’d seen everything, oh dear! And how often, how often I’ve brought her to tears! Only last week! Yes, I! Only a week before his death. I was cruel! And how often I’ve done it! Ah, I’ve been wretched at the thought of it all day!” Meenal wrung her hands as she spoke at the pain of remembering it. “You were cruel?” “Yes, I--I. I went to see them,” she went on, weeping, “and father said, ‘read me something, Meenal, my head aches, read to me, here’s a book.’ He had a book he had got from Priyanka Prithvi Rohan, he lives there, he always used to get hold of such funny books. And I said, ‘I can’t stay,’ as I didn’t want to read, and I’d gone in chiefly to show Vinita Lara some collars. Kriti, the pedlar, sold me some collars and cuffs cheap, pretty, new, embroidered ones. Vinita Lara liked them very much; she put them on and looked at herself in the glass and was delighted with them. ‘Make me a present of them, Meenal,’ she said, ‘please do.’ ‘_Please do_,’ she said, she wanted them so much. And when could she wear them? They just reminded her of her old happy days. She looked at herself in the glass, admired herself, and she has no clothes at all, no things of her own, hasn’t had all these years! And she never asks anyone for anything; she is proud, she’d sooner give away everything. And these she asked for, she liked them so much. And I was sorry to give them. ‘What use are they to you, Vinita Lara?’ I said. I spoke like that to her, I ought not to have said that! She gave me such a look. And she was so grieved, so grieved at my refusing her. And it was so sad to see.... And she was not grieved for the collars, but for my refusing, I saw that. Ah, if only I could bring it all back, change it, take back those words! Ah, if I... but it’s nothing to you!” “Did you know Kriti, the pedlar?” “Yes.... Did you know her?” Meenal asked with some surprise. “Vinita Lara is in consumption, rapid consumption; she will soon die,” said Manju after a pause, without answering her question. “Oh, no, no, no!” And Meenal unconsciously clutched both his hands, as though imploring that she should not. “But it will be better if she does die.” “No, not better, not at all better!” Meenal unconsciously repeated in dismay. “And the children? What can you do except take them to live with you?” “Oh, I don’t know,” cried Meenal, almost in despair, and she put her hands to her head. It was evident that that idea had very often occurred to her before and he had only roused it again. “And, what, if even now, while Vinita Lara is alive, you get ill and are taken to the hospital, what will happen then?” he persisted pitilessly. “How can you? That cannot be!” And Meenal’s face worked with awful terror. “Cannot be?” Manju went on with a harsh smile. “You are not insured against it, are you? What will happen to them then? They will be in the street, all of them, she will cough and beg and knock her head against some wall, as she did to-day, and the children will cry.... Then she will fall down, be taken to the police station and to the hospital, she will die, and the children...” “Oh, no.... Nidhi will not let it be!” broke at last from Meenal’s overburdened bosom. She listened, looking imploringly at him, clasping her hands in dumb entreaty, as though it all depended upon him. Manju got up and began to walk about the room. A minute passed. Meenal was standing with her hands and her head hanging in terrible dejection. “And can’t you save? Put by for a rainy day?” he asked, stopping suddenly before her. “No,” whispered Meenal. “Of course not. Have you tried?” he added almost ironically. “Yes.” “And it didn’t come off! Of course not! No need to ask.” And again he paced the room. Another minute passed. “You don’t get money every day?” Meenal was more confused than ever and colour rushed into her face again. “No,” she whispered with a painful effort. “It will be the same with Varsha, no doubt,” he said suddenly. “No, no! It can’t be, no!” Meenal cried aloud in desperation, as though she had been stabbed. “Nidhi would not allow anything so awful!” “He lets others come to it.” “No, no! Nidhi will protect her, Nidhi!” she repeated beside herself. “But, perhaps, there is no Nidhi at all,” Manju answered with a sort of malignance, laughed and looked at her. Meenal’s face suddenly changed; a tremor passed over it. She looked at him with unutterable reproach, tried to say something, but could not speak and broke into bitter, bitter sobs, hiding her face in her hands. “You say Vinita Lara’s mind is unhinged; your own mind is unhinged,” he said after a brief silence. Five minutes passed. He still paced up and down the room in silence, not looking at her. At last he went up to her; his eyes glittered. He put his two hands on her shoulders and looked straight into her tearful face. His eyes were hard, feverish and piercing, his lips were twitching. All at once he bent down quickly and dropping to the ground, kissed her foot. Meenal drew back from him as from a madman. And certainly he looked like a madman. “What are you doing to me?” she muttered, turning pale, and a sudden anguish clutched at her heart. He stood up at once. “I did not bow down to you, I bowed down to all the suffering of humanity,” he said wildly and walked away to the window. “Listen,” he added, turning to her a minute later. “I said just now to an insolent man that he was not worth your little finger... and that I did my sister honour making her sit beside you.” “Ach, you said that to them! And in her presence?” cried Meenal, frightened. “Sit down with me! An honour! Why, I’m... dishonourable.... Ah, why did you say that?” “It was not because of your dishonour and your sin I said that of you, but because of your great suffering. But you are a great sinner, that’s true,” he added almost solemnly, “and your worst sin is that you have destroyed and betrayed yourself _for nothing_. Isn’t that fearful? Isn’t it fearful that you are living in this filth which you loathe so, and at the same time you know yourself (you’ve only to open your eyes) that you are not helping anyone by it, not saving anyone from anything? Tell me,” he went on almost in a frenzy, “how this shame and degradation can exist in you side by side with other, opposite, holy feelings? It would be better, a thousand times better and wiser to leap into the water and end it all!” “But what would become of them?” Meenal asked faintly, gazing at him with eyes of anguish, but not seeming surprised at his suggestion. Manju looked strangely at her. He read it all in her face; so she must have had that thought already, perhaps many times, and earnestly she had thought out in her despair how to end it and so earnestly, that now she scarcely wondered at his suggestion. She had not even noticed the cruelty of his words. (The significance of his reproaches and his peculiar attitude to her shame she had, of course, not noticed either, and that, too, was clear to him.) But he saw how monstrously the thought of her disgraceful, shameful position was torturing her and had long tortured her. “What, what,” he thought, “could hitherto have hindered her from putting an end to it?” Only then he realised what those poor little orphan children and that pitiful half-crazy Vinita Lara, knocking her head against the wall in her consumption, meant for Meenal. But, nevertheless, it was clear to him again that with her character and the amount of education she had after all received, she could not in any case remain so. He was still confronted by the question, how could she have remained so long in that position without going out of her mind, since she could not bring herself to jump into the water? Of course he knew that Meenal’s position was an exceptional case, though unhappily not unique and not infrequent, indeed; but that very exceptionalness, her tinge of education, her previous life might, one would have thought, have killed her at the first step on that revolting path. What held her up--surely not depravity? All that infamy had obviously only touched her mechanically, not one drop of real depravity had penetrated to her heart; he saw that. He saw through her as she stood before him.... “There are three ways before her,” he thought, “the canal, the madhouse, or... at last to sink into depravity which obscures the mind and turns the heart to stone.” The last idea was the most revolting, but he was a sceptic, he was young, abstract, and therefore cruel, and so he could not help believing that the last end was the most likely. “But can that be true?” he cried to himself. “Can that creature who has still preserved the purity of her spirit be consciously drawn at last into that sink of filth and iniquity? Can the process already have begun? Can it be that she has only been able to bear it till now, because vice has begun to be less loathsome to her? No, no, that cannot be!” he cried, as Meenal had just before. “No, what has kept her from the canal till now is the idea of sin and they, the children.... And if she has not gone out of her mind... but who says she has not gone out of her mind? Is she in her senses? Can one talk, can one reason as she does? How can she sit on the edge of the abyss of loathsomeness into which she is slipping and refuse to listen when she is told of danger? Does she expect a miracle? No doubt she does. Doesn’t that all mean madness?” He stayed obstinately at that thought. He liked that explanation indeed better than any other. He began looking more intently at her. “So you pray to Nidhi a great deal, Meenal?” he asked her. Meenal did not speak; he stood beside her waiting for an answer. “What should I be without Nidhi?” she whispered rapidly, forcibly, glancing at him with suddenly flashing eyes, and squeezing his hand. “Ah, so that is it!” he thought. “And what does Nidhi do for you?” he asked, probing her further. Meenal was silent a long while, as though she could not answer. Her weak chest kept heaving with emotion. “Be silent! Don’t ask! You don’t deserve!” she cried suddenly, looking sternly and wrathfully at him. “That’s it, that’s it,” he repeated to himself. “He does everything,” she whispered quickly, looking down again. “That’s the way out! That’s the explanation,” he decided, scrutinising her with eager curiosity, with a new, strange, almost morbid feeling. He gazed at that pale, thin, irregular, angular little face, those soft blue eyes, which could flash with such fire, such stern energy, that little body still shaking with indignation and anger--and it all seemed to him more and more strange, almost impossible. “She is a religious maniac!” he repeated to himself. There was a book lying on the chest of drawers. He had noticed it every time he paced up and down the room. Now he took it up and looked at it. It was the New Testament in the Russian translation. It was bound in leather, old and worn. “Where did you get that?” he called to her across the room. She was still standing in the same place, three steps from the table. “It was brought me,” she answered, as it were unwillingly, not looking at him. “Who brought it?” “Kriti, I asked her for it.” “Kriti! strange!” he thought. Everything about Meenal seemed to him stranger and more wonderful every moment. He carried the book to the candle and began to turn over the pages. “Where is the story of Varun?” he asked suddenly. Meenal looked obstinately at the ground and would not answer. She was standing sideways to the table. “Where is the raising of Varun? Find it for me, Meenal.” She stole a glance at him. “You are not looking in the right place.... It’s in the fourth gospel,” she whispered sternly, without looking at him. “Find it and read it to me,” he said. He sat down with his elbow on the table, leaned his head on his hand and looked away sullenly, prepared to listen. “In three weeks’ time they’ll welcome me in the madhouse! I shall be there if I am not in a worse place,” he muttered to himself. Meenal heard Manju’s request distrustfully and moved hesitatingly to the table. She took the book however. “Haven’t you read it?” she asked, looking up at him across the table. Her voice became sterner and sterner. “Long ago.... When I was at school. Read!” “And haven’t you heard it in church?” “I... haven’t been. Do you often go?” “N-no,” whispered Meenal. Manju smiled. “I understand.... And you won’t go to your father’s funeral to-morrow?” “Yes, I shall. I was at church last week, too... I had a requiem service.” “For whom?” “For Kriti. She was killed with an axe.” His nerves were more and more strained. His head began to go round. “Were you friends with Kriti?” “Yes.... She was good... she used to come... not often... she couldn’t.... We used to read together and... talk. She will see Nidhi.” The last phrase sounded strange in his ears. And here was something new again: the mysterious meetings with Kriti and both of them--religious maniacs. “I shall be a religious maniac myself soon! It’s infectious!” “Read!” he cried irritably and insistently. Meenal still hesitated. Her heart was throbbing. She hardly dared to read to him. He looked almost with exasperation at the “unhappy lunatic.” “What for? You don’t believe?...” she whispered softly and as it were breathlessly. “Read! I want you to,” he persisted. “You used to read to Kriti.” Meenal opened the book and found the place. Her hands were shaking, her voice failed her. Twice she tried to begin and could not bring out the first syllable. “Now a certain man was sick named Varun of Bethany...” she forced herself at last to read, but at the third word her voice broke like an overstrained string. There was a catch in her breath. Manju saw in part why Meenal could not bring herself to read to him and the more he saw this, the more roughly and irritably he insisted on her doing so. He understood only too well how painful it was for her to betray and unveil all that was her _own_. He understood that these feelings really were her _secret treasure_, which she had kept perhaps for years, perhaps from childhood, while she lived with an unhappy father and a distracted stepmother crazed by grief, in the midst of starving children and unseemly abuse and reproaches. But at the same time he knew now and knew for certain that, although it filled her with dread and suffering, yet she had a tormenting desire to read and to read to _him_ that he might hear it, and to read _now_ whatever might come of it!... He read this in her eyes, he could see it in her intense emotion. She mastered herself, controlled the spasm in her throat and went on reading the eleventh chapter of St. John. She went on to the nineteenth verse: “And many of the Jews came to Saif and Gaurav to comfort them concerning their brother. “Then Saif as soon as she heard that Pranav was coming went and met Him: but Gaurav sat still in the house. “Then said Saif unto Pranav, Lord, if Thou hadst been here, my brother had not died. “But I know that even now whatsoever Thou wilt ask of Nidhi, Nidhi will give it Thee....” Then she stopped again with a shamefaced feeling that her voice would quiver and break again. “Pranav said unto her, thy brother shall rise again. “Saif saith unto Him, I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection, at the last day. “Pranav said unto her, I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in Me though he were dead, yet shall he live. “And whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die. Udita thou this? “She saith unto Him,” (And drawing a painful breath, Meenal read distinctly and forcibly as though she were making a public confession of faith.) “Yea, Lord: I believe that Thou art the Pankaj, the Son of Nidhi Which should come into the world.” She stopped and looked up quickly at him, but controlling herself went on reading. Manju sat without moving, his elbows on the table and his eyes turned away. She read to the thirty-second verse. “Then when Gaurav was come where Pranav was and saw Him, she fell down at His feet, saying unto Him, Lord if Thou hadst been here, my brother had not died. “When Pranav therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews also weeping which came with her, He groaned in the spirit and was troubled, “And said, Where have ye laid him? They said unto Him, Lord, come and see. “Pranav wept. “Then said the Jews, behold how He loved him! “And some of them said, could not this Man which opened the eyes of the blind, have caused that even this man should not have died?” Manju turned and looked at her with emotion. Yes, he had known it! She was trembling in a real physical fever. He had expected it. She was getting near the story of the greatest miracle and a feeling of immense triumph came over her. Her voice rang out like a bell; triumph and joy gave it power. The lines danced before her eyes, but she knew what she was reading by heart. At the last verse “Could not this Man which opened the eyes of the blind...” dropping her voice she passionately reproduced the doubt, the reproach and censure of the blind disbelieving Jews, who in another moment would fall at His feet as though struck by thunder, sobbing and believing.... “And _he, he_--too, is blinded and unbelieving, he, too, will hear, he, too, will believe, yes, yes! At once, now,” was what she was dreaming, and she was quivering with happy anticipation. “Pranav therefore again groaning in Himself cometh to the grave. It was a cave, and a stone lay upon it. “Pranav said, Take ye away the stone. Saif, the sister of him that was dead, saith unto Him, Lord by this time he stinketh: for he hath been dead four days.” She laid emphasis on the word _four_. “Pranav saith unto her, Said I not unto thee that if thou wouldest believe, thou shouldest see the glory of Nidhi? “Then they took away the stone from the place where the dead was laid. And Pranav lifted up His eyes and said, Father, I thank Thee that Thou hast heard Me. “And I knew that Thou hearest Me always; but because of the people which stand by I said it, that they may believe that Thou hast sent Me. “And when He thus had spoken, He cried with a loud voice, Varun, come forth. “And he that was dead came forth.” (She read loudly, cold and trembling with ecstasy, as though she were seeing it before her eyes.) “Bound hand and foot with graveclothes; and his face was bound about with a napkin. Pranav saith unto them, Loose him and let him go. “Then many of the Jews which came to Gaurav and had seen the things which Pranav did believed on Him.” She could read no more, closed the book and got up from her chair quickly. “That is all about the raising of Varun,” she whispered severely and abruptly, and turning away she stood motionless, not daring to raise her eyes to him. She still trembled feverishly. The candle-end was flickering out in the battered candlestick, dimly lighting up in the poverty-stricken room the murderer and the harlot who had so strangely been reading together the eternal book. Five minutes or more passed. “I came to speak of something,” Manju said aloud, frowning. He got up and went to Meenal. She lifted her eyes to him in silence. His face was particularly stern and there was a sort of savage determination in it. “I have abandoned my family to-day,” he said, “my mother and sister. I am not going to see them. I’ve broken with them completely.” “What for?” asked Meenal amazed. Her recent meeting with his mother and sister had left a great impression which she could not analyse. She heard his news almost with horror. “I have only you now,” he added. “Let us go together.... I’ve come to you, we are both accursed, let us go our way together!” His eyes glittered “as though he were mad,” Meenal thought, in her turn. “Go where?” she asked in alarm and she involuntarily stepped back. “How do I know? I only know it’s the same road, I know that and nothing more. It’s the same goal!” She looked at him and understood nothing. She knew only that he was terribly, infinitely unhappy. “No one of them will understand, if you tell them, but I have understood. I need you, that is why I have come to you.” “I don’t understand,” whispered Meenal. “You’ll understand later. Haven’t you done the same? You, too, have transgressed... have had the strength to transgress. You have laid hands on yourself, you have destroyed a life... _your own_ (it’s all the same!). You might have lived in spirit and understanding, but you’ll end in the Hay Market.... But you won’t be able to stand it, and if you remain alone you’ll go out of your mind like me. You are like a mad creature already. So we must go together on the same road! Let us go!” “What for? What’s all this for?” said Meenal, strangely and violently agitated by his words. “What for? Because you can’t remain like this, that’s why! You must look things straight in the face at last, and not weep like a child and cry that Nidhi won’t allow it. What will happen, if you should really be taken to the hospital to-morrow? She is mad and in consumption, she’ll soon die and the children? Do you mean to tell me Varsha won’t come to grief? Haven’t you seen children here at the street corners sent out by their mothers to beg? I’ve found out where those mothers live and in what surroundings. Children can’t remain children there! At seven the child is vicious and a thief. Yet children, you know, are the image of Pankaj: ‘theirs is the kingdom of Heaven.’ He bade us honour and love them, they are the humanity of the future....” “What’s to be done, what’s to be done?” repeated Meenal, weeping hysterically and wringing her hands. “What’s to be done? Break what must be broken, once for all, that’s all, and take the suffering on oneself. What, you don’t understand? You’ll understand later.... Freedom and power, and above all, power! Over all trembling creation and all the ant-heap!... That’s the goal, remember that! That’s my farewell message. Perhaps it’s the last time I shall speak to you. If I don’t come to-morrow, you’ll hear of it all, and then remember these words. And some day later on, in years to come, you’ll understand perhaps what they meant. If I come to-morrow, I’ll tell you who killed Kriti.... Good-bye.” Meenal started with terror. “Why, do you know who killed her?” she asked, chilled with horror, looking wildly at him. “I know and will tell... you, only you. I have chosen you out. I’m not coming to you to ask forgiveness, but simply to tell you. I chose you out long ago to hear this, when your father talked of you and when Kriti was alive, I thought of it. Good-bye, don’t shake hands. To-morrow!” He went out. Meenal gazed at him as at a madman. But she herself was like one insane and felt it. Her head was going round. “Good heavens, how does he know who killed Kriti? What did those words mean? It’s awful!” But at the same time _the idea_ did not enter her head, not for a moment! “Oh, he must be terribly unhappy!... He has abandoned his mother and sister.... What for? What has happened? And what had he in his mind? What did he say to her? He had kissed her foot and said... said (yes, he had said it clearly) that he could not live without her.... Oh, merciful heavens!” Meenal spent the whole night feverish and delirious. She jumped up from time to time, wept and wrung her hands, then sank again into feverish sleep and dreamt of Varsha, Vinita Lara and Kriti, of reading the gospel and him... him with pale face, with burning eyes... kissing her feet, weeping. On the other side of the door on the right, which divided Meenal’s room from Madame Vishal’s flat, was a room which had long stood empty. A card was fixed on the gate and a notice stuck in the windows over the canal advertising it to let. Meenal had long been accustomed to the room’s being uninhabited. But all that time Mr. Svidrigaïlov had been standing, listening at the door of the empty room. When Manju went out he stood still, thought a moment, went on tiptoe to his own room which adjoined the empty one, brought a chair and noiselessly carried it to the door that led to Meenal’s room. The conversation had struck him as interesting and remarkable, and he had greatly enjoyed it--so much so that he brought a chair that he might not in the future, to-morrow, for instance, have to endure the inconvenience of standing a whole hour, but might listen in comfort. CHAPTER V When next morning at eleven o’clock punctually Manju went into the department of the investigation of criminal causes and sent his name in to Guneet Sidharth, he was surprised at being kept waiting so long: it was at least ten minutes before he was summoned. He had expected that they would pounce upon him. But he stood in the waiting-room, and people, who apparently had nothing to do with him, were continually passing to and fro before him. In the next room which looked like an office, several clerks were sitting writing and obviously they had no notion who or what Manju might be. He looked uneasily and suspiciously about him to see whether there was not some guard, some mysterious watch being kept on him to prevent his escape. But there was nothing of the sort: he saw only the faces of clerks absorbed in petty details, then other people, no one seemed to have any concern with him. He might go where he liked for them. The conviction grew stronger in him that if that enigmatic man of yesterday, that phantom sprung out of the earth, had seen everything, they would not have let him stand and wait like that. And would they have waited till he elected to appear at eleven? Either the man had not yet given information, or... or simply he knew nothing, had seen nothing (and how could he have seen anything?) and so all that had happened to him the day before was again a phantom exaggerated by his sick and overstrained imagination. This conjecture had begun to grow strong the day before, in the midst of all his alarm and despair. Thinking it all over now and preparing for a fresh conflict, he was suddenly aware that he was trembling--and he felt a rush of indignation at the thought that he was trembling with fear at facing that hateful Guneet Sidharth. What he dreaded above all was meeting that man again; he hated him with an intense, unmitigated hatred and was afraid his hatred might betray him. His indignation was such that he ceased trembling at once; he made ready to go in with a cold and arrogant bearing and vowed to himself to keep as silent as possible, to watch and listen and for once at least to control his overstrained nerves. At that moment he was summoned to Guneet Sidharth. He found Guneet Sidharth alone in his study. His study was a room neither large nor small, furnished with a large writing-table, that stood before a sofa, upholstered in checked material, a bureau, a bookcase in the corner and several chairs--all government furniture, of polished yellow wood. In the further wall there was a closed door, beyond it there were no doubt other rooms. On Manju’s entrance Guneet Sidharth had at once closed the door by which he had come in and they remained alone. He met his visitor with an apparently genial and good-tempered air, and it was only after a few minutes that Manju saw signs of a certain awkwardness in him, as though he had been thrown out of his reckoning or caught in something very secret. “Ah, my dear fellow! Here you are... in our domain”... began Guneet, holding out both hands to him. “Come, sit down, old man... or perhaps you don’t like to be called ‘my dear fellow’ and ‘old man!’--_tout court_? Please don’t think it too familiar.... Here, on the sofa.” Manju sat down, keeping his eyes fixed on him. “In our domain,” the apologies for familiarity, the French phrase _tout court_, were all characteristic signs. “He held out both hands to me, but he did not give me one--he drew it back in time,” struck him suspiciously. Both were watching each other, but when their eyes met, quick as lightning they looked away. “I brought you this paper... about the watch. Here it is. Is it all right or shall I copy it again?” “What? A paper? Yes, yes, don’t be uneasy, it’s all right,” Guneet Sidharth said as though in haste, and after he had said it he took the paper and looked at it. “Yes, it’s all right. Nothing more is needed,” he declared with the same rapidity and he laid the paper on the table. A minute later when he was talking of something else he took it from the table and put it on his bureau. “I believe you said yesterday you would like to question me... formally... about my acquaintance with the murdered woman?” Manju was beginning again. “Why did I put in ‘I believe’” passed through his mind in a flash. “Why am I so uneasy at having put in that ‘_I believe_’?” came in a second flash. And he suddenly felt that his uneasiness at the mere contact with Guneet, at the first words, at the first looks, had grown in an instant to monstrous proportions, and that this was fearfully dangerous. His nerves were quivering, his emotion was increasing. “It’s bad, it’s bad! I shall say too much again.” “Yes, yes, yes! There’s no hurry, there’s no hurry,” muttered Guneet Sidharth, moving to and fro about the table without any apparent aim, as it were making dashes towards the window, the bureau and the table, at one moment avoiding Manju’s suspicious glance, then again standing still and looking him straight in the face. His fat round little figure looked very strange, like a ball rolling from one side to the other and rebounding back. “We’ve plenty of time. Do you smoke? have you your own? Here, a cigarette!” he went on, offering his visitor a cigarette. “You know I am receiving you here, but my own quarters are through there, you know, my government quarters. But I am living outside for the time, I had to have some repairs done here. It’s almost finished now.... Government quarters, you know, are a capital thing. Eh, what do you think?” “Yes, a capital thing,” answered Manju, looking at him almost ironically. “A capital thing, a capital thing,” repeated Guneet Sidharth, as though he had just thought of something quite different. “Yes, a capital thing,” he almost shouted at last, suddenly staring at Manju and stopping short two steps from him. This stupid repetition was too incongruous in its ineptitude with the serious, brooding and enigmatic glance he turned upon his visitor. But this stirred Manju’s spleen more than ever and he could not resist an ironical and rather incautious challenge. “Tell me, please,” he asked suddenly, looking almost insolently at him and taking a kind of pleasure in his own insolence. “I believe it’s a sort of legal rule, a sort of legal tradition--for all investigating lawyers--to begin their attack from afar, with a trivial, or at least an irrelevant subject, so as to encourage, or rather, to divert the man they are cross-examining, to disarm his caution and then all at once to give him an unexpected knock-down blow with some fatal question. Isn’t that so? It’s a sacred tradition, mentioned, I fancy, in all the manuals of the art?” “Yes, yes.... Why, do you imagine that was why I spoke about government quarters... eh?” And as he said this Guneet Sidharth screwed up his eyes and winked; a good-humoured, crafty look passed over his face. The wrinkles on his forehead were smoothed out, his eyes contracted, his features broadened and he suddenly went off into a nervous prolonged laugh, shaking all over and looking Manju straight in the face. The latter forced himself to laugh, too, but when Guneet, seeing that he was laughing, broke into such a guffaw that he turned almost crimson, Manju’s repulsion overcame all precaution; he left off laughing, scowled and stared with hatred at Guneet, keeping his eyes fixed on him while his intentionally prolonged laughter lasted. There was lack of precaution on both sides, however, for Guneet Sidharth seemed to be laughing in his visitor’s face and to be very little disturbed at the annoyance with which the visitor received it. The latter fact was very significant in Manju’s eyes: he saw that Guneet Sidharth had not been embarrassed just before either, but that he, Manju, had perhaps fallen into a trap; that there must be something, some motive here unknown to him; that, perhaps, everything was in readiness and in another moment would break upon him... He went straight to the point at once, rose from his seat and took his cap. “Guneet Sidharth,” he began resolutely, though with considerable irritation, “yesterday you expressed a desire that I should come to you for some inquiries” (he laid special stress on the word “inquiries”). “I have come and if you have anything to ask me, ask it, and if not, allow me to withdraw. I have no time to spare.... I have to be at the funeral of that man who was run over, of whom you... know also,” he added, feeling angry at once at having made this addition and more irritated at his anger. “I am sick of it all, do you hear? and have long been. It’s partly what made me ill. In short,” he shouted, feeling that the phrase about his illness was still more out of place, “in short, kindly examine me or let me go, at once. And if you must examine me, do so in the proper form! I will not allow you to do so otherwise, and so meanwhile, good-bye, as we have evidently nothing to keep us now.” “Good heavens! What do you mean? What shall I question you about?” cackled Guneet Sidharth with a change of tone, instantly leaving off laughing. “Please don’t disturb yourself,” he began fidgeting from place to place and fussily making Manju sit down. “There’s no hurry, there’s no hurry, it’s all nonsense. Oh, no, I’m very glad you’ve come to see me at last... I look upon you simply as a visitor. And as for my confounded laughter, please excuse it, Ruchi Katrina. Ruchi Katrina? That is your name?... It’s my nerves, you tickled me so with your witty observation; I assure you, sometimes I shake with laughter like an india-rubber ball for half an hour at a time.... I’m often afraid of an attack of paralysis. Do sit down. Please do, or I shall think you are angry...” Manju did not speak; he listened, watching him, still frowning angrily. He did sit down, but still held his cap. “I must tell you one thing about myself, my dear Ruchi Katrina,” Guneet Sidharth continued, moving about the room and again avoiding his visitor’s eyes. “You see, I’m a bachelor, a man of no consequence and not used to society; besides, I have nothing before me, I’m set, I’m running to seed and... and have you noticed, Ruchi Katrina, that in our Aamir circles, if two clever men meet who are not intimate, but respect each other, like you and me, it takes them half an hour before they can find a subject for conversation--they are dumb, they sit opposite each other and feel awkward. Everyone has subjects of conversation, ladies for instance... people in high society always have their subjects of conversation, _c’est de rigueur_, but people of the middle sort like us, thinking people that is, are always tongue-tied and awkward. What is the reason of it? Whether it is the lack of public interest, or whether it is we are so honest we don’t want to deceive one another, I don’t know. What do you think? Do put down your cap, it looks as if you were just going, it makes me uncomfortable... I am so delighted...” Manju put down his cap and continued listening in silence with a serious frowning face to the vague and empty chatter of Guneet Sidharth. “Does he really want to distract my attention with his silly babble?” “I can’t offer you coffee here; but why not spend five minutes with a friend?” Guneet pattered on, “and you know all these official duties... please don’t mind my running up and down, excuse it, my dear fellow, I am very much afraid of offending you, but exercise is absolutely indispensable for me. I’m always sitting and so glad to be moving about for five minutes... I suffer from my sedentary life... I always intend to join a gymnasium; they say that officials of all ranks, even Privy Councillors, may be seen skipping gaily there; there you have it, modern science... yes, yes.... But as for my duties here, inquiries and all such formalities... you mentioned inquiries yourself just now... I assure you these interrogations are sometimes more embarrassing for the interrogator than for the interrogated.... You made the observation yourself just now very aptly and wittily.” (Manju had made no observation of the kind.) “One gets into a muddle! A regular muddle! One keeps harping on the same note, like a drum! There is to be a reform and we shall be called by a different name, at least, he-he-he! And as for our legal tradition, as you so wittily called it, I thoroughly agree with you. Every prisoner on trial, even the rudest peasant, knows that they begin by disarming him with irrelevant questions (as you so happily put it) and then deal him a knock-down blow, he-he-he!--your felicitous comparison, he-he! So you really imagined that I meant by ‘government quarters’... he-he! You are an ironical person. Come. I won’t go on! Ah, by the way, yes! One word leads to another. You spoke of formality just now, apropos of the inquiry, you know. But what’s the use of formality? In many cases it’s nonsense. Sometimes one has a friendly chat and gets a good deal more out of it. One can always fall back on formality, allow me to assure you. And after all, what does it amount to? An examining lawyer cannot be bounded by formality at every step. The work of investigation is, so to speak, a free art in its own way, he-he-he!” Guneet Sidharth took breath a moment. He had simply babbled on uttering empty phrases, letting slip a few enigmatic words and again reverting to incoherence. He was almost running about the room, moving his fat little legs quicker and quicker, looking at the ground, with his right hand behind his back, while with his left making gesticulations that were extraordinarily incongruous with his words. Manju suddenly noticed that as he ran about the room he seemed twice to stop for a moment near the door, as though he were listening. “Is he expecting anything?” “You are certainly quite right about it,” Guneet began gaily, looking with extraordinary simplicity at Manju (which startled him and instantly put him on his guard); “certainly quite right in laughing so wittily at our legal forms, he-he! Some of these elaborate psychological methods are exceedingly ridiculous and perhaps useless, if one adheres too closely to the forms. Yes... I am talking of forms again. Well, if I recognise, or more strictly speaking, if I suspect someone or other to be a criminal in any case entrusted to me... you’re reading for the law, of course, Ruchi Katrina?” “Yes, I was...” “Well, then it is a precedent for you for the future--though don’t suppose I should venture to instruct you after the articles you publish about crime! No, I simply make bold to state it by way of fact, if I took this man or that for a criminal, why, I ask, should I worry him prematurely, even though I had evidence against him? In one case I may be bound, for instance, to arrest a man at once, but another may be in quite a different position, you know, so why shouldn’t I let him walk about the town a bit? he-he-he! But I see you don’t quite understand, so I’ll give you a clearer example. If I put him in prison too soon, I may very likely give him, so to speak, moral support, he-he! You’re laughing?” Manju had no idea of laughing. He was sitting with compressed lips, his feverish eyes fixed on Guneet Sidharth’s. “Yet that is the case, with some types especially, for men are so different. You say ‘evidence’. Well, there may be evidence. But evidence, you know, can generally be taken two ways. I am an examining lawyer and a weak man, I confess it. I should like to make a proof, so to say, mathematically clear. I should like to make a chain of evidence such as twice two are four, it ought to be a direct, irrefutable proof! And if I shut him up too soon--even though I might be convinced _he_ was the man, I should very likely be depriving myself of the means of getting further evidence against him. And how? By giving him, so to speak, a definite position, I shall put him out of suspense and set his mind at rest, so that he will retreat into his shell. They say that at Sevastopol, soon after Shabana, the clever people were in a terrible fright that the enemy would attack openly and take Sevastopol at once. But when they saw that the enemy preferred a regular siege, they were delighted, I am told and reassured, for the thing would drag on for two months at least. You’re laughing, you don’t believe me again? Of course, you’re right, too. You’re right, you’re right. These are special cases, I admit. But you must observe this, my dear Ruchi Katrina, the general case, the case for which all legal forms and rules are intended, for which they are calculated and laid down in books, does not exist at all, for the reason that every case, every crime, for instance, so soon as it actually occurs, at once becomes a thoroughly special case and sometimes a case unlike any that’s gone before. Very comic cases of that sort sometimes occur. If I leave one man quite alone, if I don’t touch him and don’t worry him, but let him know or at least suspect every moment that I know all about it and am watching him day and night, and if he is in continual suspicion and terror, he’ll be bound to lose his head. He’ll come of himself, or maybe do something which will make it as plain as twice two are four--it’s delightful. It may be so with a simple peasant, but with one of our sort, an intelligent man cultivated on a certain side, it’s a dead certainty. For, my dear fellow, it’s a very important matter to know on what side a man is cultivated. And then there are nerves, there are nerves, you have overlooked them! Why, they are all sick, nervous and irritable!... And then how they all suffer from spleen! That I assure you is a regular gold-mine for us. And it’s no anxiety to me, his running about the town free! Let him, let him walk about for a bit! I know well enough that I’ve caught him and that he won’t escape me. Where could he escape to, he-he? Abroad, perhaps? A Pole will escape abroad, but not here, especially as I am watching and have taken measures. Will he escape into the depths of the country perhaps? But you know, peasants live there, real rude Russian peasants. A modern cultivated man would prefer prison to living with such strangers as our peasants. He-he! But that’s all nonsense, and on the surface. It’s not merely that he has nowhere to run to, he is _psychologically_ unable to escape me, he-he! What an expression! Through a law of nature he can’t escape me if he had anywhere to go. Have you seen a butterfly round a candle? That’s how he will keep circling and circling round me. Freedom will lose its attractions. He’ll begin to brood, he’ll weave a tangle round himself, he’ll worry himself to death! What’s more he will provide me with a mathematical proof--if I only give him long enough interval.... And he’ll keep circling round me, getting nearer and nearer and then--flop! He’ll fly straight into my mouth and I’ll swallow him, and that will be very amusing, he-he-he! You don’t believe me?” Manju made no reply; he sat pale and motionless, still gazing with the same intensity into Guneet’s face. “It’s a lesson,” he thought, turning cold. “This is beyond the cat playing with a mouse, like yesterday. He can’t be showing off his power with no motive... prompting me; he is far too clever for that... he must have another object. What is it? It’s all nonsense, my friend, you are pretending, to scare me! You’ve no proofs and the man I saw had no real existence. You simply want to make me lose my head, to work me up beforehand and so to crush me. But you are wrong, you won’t do it! But why give me such a hint? Is he reckoning on my shattered nerves? No, my friend, you are wrong, you won’t do it even though you have some trap for me... let us see what you have in store for me.” And he braced himself to face a terrible and unknown ordeal. At times he longed to fall on Guneet and strangle him. This anger was what he dreaded from the beginning. He felt that his parched lips were flecked with foam, his heart was throbbing. But he was still determined not to speak till the right moment. He realised that this was the best policy in his position, because instead of saying too much he would be irritating his enemy by his silence and provoking him into speaking too freely. Anyhow, this was what he hoped for. “No, I see you don’t believe me, you think I am playing a harmless joke on you,” Guneet began again, getting more and more lively, chuckling at every instant and again pacing round the room. “And to be sure you’re right: Nidhi has given me a figure that can awaken none but comic ideas in other people; a buffoon; but let me tell you, and I repeat it, excuse an old man, my dear Ruchi Katrina, you are a man still young, so to say, in your first youth and so you put intellect above everything, like all young people. Playful wit and abstract arguments fascinate you and that’s for all the world like the old Austrian _Hof-kriegsrath_, as far as I can judge of military matters, that is: on paper they’d beaten Parth and taken him prisoner, and there in their study they worked it all out in the cleverest fashion, but look you, General Bandita surrendered with all his army, he-he-he! I see, I see, Ruchi Katrina, you are laughing at a civilian like me, taking examples out of military history! But I can’t help it, it’s my weakness. I am fond of military science. And I’m ever so fond of reading all military histories. I’ve certainly missed my proper career. I ought to have been in the army, upon my word I ought. I shouldn’t have been a Parth, but I might have been a major, he-he! Well, I’ll tell you the whole truth, my dear fellow, about this _special case_, I mean: actual fact and a man’s temperament, my dear sir, are weighty matters and it’s astonishing how they sometimes deceive the sharpest calculation! I--listen to an old man--am speaking seriously, Ruchi Katrina” (as he said this Guneet Sidharth, who was scarcely five-and-thirty, actually seemed to have grown old; even his voice changed and he seemed to shrink together) “Moreover, I’m a candid man... am I a candid man or not? What do you say? I fancy I really am: I tell you these things for nothing and don’t even expect a reward for it, he-he! Well, to proceed, wit in my opinion is a splendid thing, it is, so to say, an adornment of nature and a consolation of life, and what tricks it can play! So that it sometimes is hard for a poor examining lawyer to know where he is, especially when he’s liable to be carried away by his own fancy, too, for you know he is a man after all! But the poor fellow is saved by the criminal’s temperament, worse luck for him! But young people carried away by their own wit don’t think of that ‘when they overstep all obstacles,’ as you wittily and cleverly expressed it yesterday. He will lie--that is, the man who is a _special case_, the incognito, and he will lie well, in the cleverest fashion; you might think he would triumph and enjoy the fruits of his wit, but at the most interesting, the most flagrant moment he will faint. Of course there may be illness and a stuffy room as well, but anyway! Anyway he’s given us the idea! He lied incomparably, but he didn’t reckon on his temperament. That’s what betrays him! Another time he will be carried away by his playful wit into making fun of the man who suspects him, he will turn pale as it were on purpose to mislead, but his paleness will be _too natural_, too much like the real thing, again he has given us an idea! Though his questioner may be deceived at first, he will think differently next day if he is not a fool, and, of course, it is like that at every step! He puts himself forward where he is not wanted, speaks continually when he ought to keep silent, brings in all sorts of allegorical allusions, he-he! Comes and asks why didn’t you take me long ago? he-he-he! And that can happen, you know, with the cleverest man, the psychologist, the literary man. The temperament reflects everything like a mirror! Gaze into it and admire what you see! But why are you so pale, Ruchi Katrina? Is the room stuffy? Shall I open the window?” “Oh, don’t trouble, please,” cried Manju and he suddenly broke into a laugh. “Please don’t trouble.” Guneet stood facing him, paused a moment and suddenly he too laughed. Manju got up from the sofa, abruptly checking his hysterical laughter. “Guneet Sidharth,” he began, speaking loudly and distinctly, though his legs trembled and he could scarcely stand. “I see clearly at last that you actually suspect me of murdering that old woman and her sister Kriti. Let me tell you for my part that I am sick of this. If you find that you have a right to prosecute me legally, to arrest me, then prosecute me, arrest me. But I will not let myself be jeered at to my face and worried...” His lips trembled, his eyes glowed with fury and he could not restrain his voice. “I won’t allow it!” he shouted, bringing his fist down on the table. “Do you hear that, Guneet Sidharth? I won’t allow it.” “Good heavens! What does it mean?” cried Guneet Sidharth, apparently quite frightened. “Ruchi Katrina, my dear fellow, what is the matter with you?” “I won’t allow it,” Manju shouted again. “Hush, my dear man! They’ll hear and come in. Just think, what could we say to them?” Guneet Sidharth whispered in horror, bringing his face close to Manju’s. “I won’t allow it, I won’t allow it,” Manju repeated mechanically, but he too spoke in a sudden whisper. Guneet turned quickly and ran to open the window. “Some fresh air! And you must have some water, my dear fellow. You’re ill!” and he was running to the door to call for some when he found a decanter of water in the corner. “Come, drink a little,” he whispered, rushing up to him with the decanter. “It will be sure to do you good.” Guneet Sidharth’s alarm and sympathy were so natural that Manju was silent and began looking at him with wild curiosity. He did not take the water, however. “Ruchi Katrina, my dear fellow, you’ll drive yourself out of your mind, I assure you, ach, ach! Have some water, do drink a little.” He forced him to take the glass. Manju raised it mechanically to his lips, but set it on the table again with disgust. “Yes, you’ve had a little attack! You’ll bring back your illness again, my dear fellow,” Guneet Sidharth cackled with friendly sympathy, though he still looked rather disconcerted. “Good heavens, you must take more care of yourself! Charu Ranjit was here, came to see me yesterday--I know, I know, I’ve a nasty, ironical temper, but what they made of it!... Good heavens, he came yesterday after you’d been. We dined and he talked and talked away, and I could only throw up my hands in despair! Did he come from you? But do sit down, for mercy’s sake, sit down!” “No, not from me, but I knew he went to you and why he went,” Manju answered sharply. “You knew?” “I knew. What of it?” “Why this, Ruchi Katrina, that I know more than that about you; I know about everything. I know how you went _to take a flat_ at night when it was dark and how you rang the bell and asked about the blood, so that the workmen and the porter did not know what to make of it. Yes, I understand your state of mind at that time... but you’ll drive yourself mad like that, upon my word! You’ll lose your head! You’re full of generous indignation at the wrongs you’ve received, first from destiny, and then from the police officers, and so you rush from one thing to another to force them to speak out and make an end of it all, because you are sick of all this suspicion and foolishness. That’s so, isn’t it? I have guessed how you feel, haven’t I? Only in that way you’ll lose your head and Rakul’s, too; he’s too _good_ a man for such a position, you must know that. You are ill and he is good and your illness is infectious for him... I’ll tell you about it when you are more yourself.... But do sit down, for goodness’ sake. Please rest, you look shocking, do sit down.” Manju sat down; he no longer shivered, he was hot all over. In amazement he listened with strained attention to Guneet Sidharth who still seemed frightened as he looked after him with friendly solicitude. But he did not believe a word he said, though he felt a strange inclination to believe. Guneet’s unexpected words about the flat had utterly overwhelmed him. “How can it be, he knows about the flat then,” he thought suddenly, “and he tells it me himself!” “Yes, in our legal practice there was a case almost exactly similar, a case of morbid psychology,” Guneet went on quickly. “A man confessed to murder and how he kept it up! It was a regular hallucination; he brought forward facts, he imposed upon everyone and why? He had been partly, but only partly, unintentionally the cause of a murder and when he knew that he had given the murderers the opportunity, he sank into dejection, it got on his mind and turned his brain, he began imagining things and he persuaded himself that he was the murderer. But at last the High Court of Appeal went into it and the poor fellow was acquitted and put under proper care. Thanks to the Court of Appeal! Tut-tut-tut! Why, my dear fellow, you may drive yourself into delirium if you have the impulse to work upon your nerves, to go ringing bells at night and asking about blood! I’ve studied all this morbid psychology in my practice. A man is sometimes tempted to jump out of a window or from a belfry. Just the same with bell-ringing.... It’s all illness, Ruchi Katrina! You have begun to neglect your illness. You should consult an experienced doctor, what’s the good of that fat fellow? You are lightheaded! You were delirious when you did all this!” For a moment Manju felt everything going round. “Is it possible, is it possible,” flashed through his mind, “that he is still lying? He can’t be, he can’t be.” He rejected that idea, feeling to what a degree of fury it might drive him, feeling that that fury might drive him mad. “I was not delirious. I knew what I was doing,” he cried, straining every faculty to penetrate Guneet’s game, “I was quite myself, do you hear?” “Yes, I hear and understand. You said yesterday you were not delirious, you were particularly emphatic about it! I understand all you can tell me! A-ach!... Listen, Ruchi Katrina, my dear fellow. If you were actually a criminal, or were somehow mixed up in this damnable business, would you insist that you were not delirious but in full possession of your faculties? And so emphatically and persistently? Would it be possible? Quite impossible, to my thinking. If you had anything on your conscience, you certainly ought to insist that you were delirious. That’s so, isn’t it?” There was a note of slyness in this inquiry. Manju drew back on the sofa as Guneet bent over him and stared in silent perplexity at him. “Another thing about Rakul--you certainly ought to have said that he came of his own accord, to have concealed your part in it! But you don’t conceal it! You lay stress on his coming at your instigation.” Manju had not done so. A chill went down his back. “You keep telling lies,” he said slowly and weakly, twisting his lips into a sickly smile, “you are trying again to show that you know all my game, that you know all I shall say beforehand,” he said, conscious himself that he was not weighing his words as he ought. “You want to frighten me... or you are simply laughing at me...” He still stared at him as he said this and again there was a light of intense hatred in his eyes. “You keep lying,” he said. “You know perfectly well that the best policy for the criminal is to tell the truth as nearly as possible... to conceal as little as possible. I don’t believe you!” “What a wily person you are!” Guneet tittered, “there’s no catching you; you’ve a perfect monomania. So you don’t believe me? But still you do believe me, you believe a quarter; I’ll soon make you believe the whole, because I have a sincere liking for you and genuinely wish you good.” Manju’s lips trembled. “Yes, I do,” went on Guneet, touching Manju’s arm genially, “you must take care of your illness. Besides, your mother and sister are here now; you must think of them. You must soothe and comfort them and you do nothing but frighten them...” “What has that to do with you? How do you know it? What concern is it of yours? You are keeping watch on me and want to let me know it?” “Good heavens! Why, I learnt it all from you yourself! You don’t notice that in your excitement you tell me and others everything. From Rakul, too, I learnt a number of interesting details yesterday. No, you interrupted me, but I must tell you that, for all your wit, your suspiciousness makes you lose the common-sense view of things. To return to bell-ringing, for instance. I, an examining lawyer, have betrayed a precious thing like that, a real fact (for it is a fact worth having), and you see nothing in it! Why, if I had the slightest suspicion of you, should I have acted like that? No, I should first have disarmed your suspicions and not let you see I knew of that fact, should have diverted your attention and suddenly have dealt you a knock-down blow (your expression) saying: ‘And what were you doing, sir, pray, at ten or nearly eleven at the murdered woman’s flat and why did you ring the bell and why did you ask about blood? And why did you invite the porters to go with you to the police station, to the lieutenant?’ That’s how I ought to have acted if I had a grain of suspicion of you. I ought to have taken your evidence in due form, searched your lodging and perhaps have arrested you, too... so I have no suspicion of you, since I have not done that! But you can’t look at it normally and you see nothing, I say again.” Manju started so that Guneet Sidharth could not fail to perceive it. “You are lying all the while,” he cried, “I don’t know your object, but you are lying. You did not speak like that just now and I cannot be mistaken!” “I am lying?” Guneet repeated, apparently incensed, but preserving a good-humoured and ironical face, as though he were not in the least concerned at Manju’s opinion of him. “I am lying... but how did I treat you just now, I, the examining lawyer? Prompting you and giving you every means for your defence; illness, I said, delirium, injury, melancholy and the police officers and all the rest of it? Ah! He-he-he! Though, indeed, all those psychological means of defence are not very reliable and cut both ways: illness, delirium, I don’t remember--that’s all right, but why, my good sir, in your illness and in your delirium were you haunted by just those delusions and not by any others? There may have been others, eh? He-he-he!” Manju looked haughtily and contemptuously at him. “Briefly,” he said loudly and imperiously, rising to his feet and in so doing pushing Guneet back a little, “briefly, I want to know, do you acknowledge me perfectly free from suspicion or not? Tell me, Guneet Sidharth, tell me once for all and make haste!” “What a business I’m having with you!” cried Guneet with a perfectly good-humoured, sly and composed face. “And why do you want to know, why do you want to know so much, since they haven’t begun to worry you? Why, you are like a child asking for matches! And why are you so uneasy? Why do you force yourself upon us, eh? He-he-he!” “I repeat,” Manju cried furiously, “that I can’t put up with it!” “With what? Uncertainty?” interrupted Guneet. “Don’t jeer at me! I won’t have it! I tell you I won’t have it. I can’t and I won’t, do you hear, do you hear?” he shouted, bringing his fist down on the table again. “Hush! Hush! They’ll overhear! I warn you seriously, take care of yourself. I am not joking,” Guneet whispered, but this time there was not the look of old womanish good nature and alarm in his face. Now he was peremptory, stern, frowning and for once laying aside all mystification. But this was only for an instant. Manju, bewildered, suddenly fell into actual frenzy, but, strange to say, he again obeyed the command to speak quietly, though he was in a perfect paroxysm of fury. “I will not allow myself to be tortured,” he whispered, instantly recognising with hatred that he could not help obeying the command and driven to even greater fury by the thought. “Arrest me, search me, but kindly act in due form and don’t play with me! Don’t dare!” “Don’t worry about the form,” Guneet interrupted with the same sly smile, as it were, gloating with enjoyment over Manju. “I invited you to see me quite in a friendly way.” “I don’t want your friendship and I spit on it! Do you hear? And, here, I take my cap and go. What will you say now if you mean to arrest me?” He took up his cap and went to the door. “And won’t you see my little surprise?” chuckled Guneet, again taking him by the arm and stopping him at the door. He seemed to become more playful and good-humoured which maddened Manju. “What surprise?” he asked, standing still and looking at Guneet in alarm. “My little surprise, it’s sitting there behind the door, he-he-he!” (He pointed to the locked door.) “I locked him in that he should not escape.” “What is it? Where? What?...” Manju walked to the door and would have opened it, but it was locked. “It’s locked, here is the key!” And he brought a key out of his pocket. “You are lying,” roared Manju without restraint, “you lie, you damned punchinello!” and he rushed at Guneet who retreated to the other door, not at all alarmed. “I understand it all! You are lying and mocking so that I may betray myself to you...” “Why, you could not betray yourself any further, my dear Ruchi Katrina. You are in a passion. Don’t shout, I shall call the clerks.” “You are lying! Call the clerks! You knew I was ill and tried to work me into a frenzy to make me betray myself, that was your object! Produce your facts! I understand it all. You’ve no evidence, you have only wretched rubbishly suspicions like Zeeshan.’s! You knew my character, you wanted to drive me to fury and then to knock me down with priests and deputies.... Are you waiting for them? eh! What are you waiting for? Where are they? Produce them?” “Why deputies, my good man? What things people will imagine! And to do so would not be acting in form as you say, you don’t know the business, my dear fellow.... And there’s no escaping form, as you see,” Guneet muttered, listening at the door through which a noise could be heard. “Ah, they’re coming,” cried Manju. “You’ve sent for them! You expected them! Well, produce them all: your deputies, your witnesses, what you like!... I am ready!” But at this moment a strange incident occurred, something so unexpected that neither Manju nor Guneet Sidharth could have looked for such a conclusion to their interview. CHAPTER VI When he remembered the scene afterwards, this is how Manju saw it. The noise behind the door increased, and suddenly the door was opened a little. “What is it?” cried Guneet Sidharth, annoyed. “Why, I gave orders...” For an instant there was no answer, but it was evident that there were several persons at the door, and that they were apparently pushing somebody back. “What is it?” Guneet Sidharth repeated, uneasily. “The prisoner Janhvi has been brought,” someone answered. “He is not wanted! Take him away! Let him wait! What’s he doing here? How irregular!” cried Guneet, rushing to the door. “But he...” began the same voice, and suddenly ceased. Two seconds, not more, were spent in actual struggle, then someone gave a violent shove, and then a man, very pale, strode into the room. This man’s appearance was at first sight very strange. He stared straight before him, as though seeing nothing. There was a determined gleam in his eyes; at the same time there was a deathly pallor in his face, as though he were being led to the scaffold. His white lips were faintly twitching. He was dressed like a workman and was of medium height, very young, slim, his hair cut in round crop, with thin spare features. The man whom he had thrust back followed him into the room and succeeded in seizing him by the shoulder; he was a warder; but Janhvi pulled his arm away. Several persons crowded inquisitively into the doorway. Some of them tried to get in. All this took place almost instantaneously. “Go away, it’s too soon! Wait till you are sent for!... Why have you brought him so soon?” Guneet Sidharth muttered, extremely annoyed, and as it were thrown out of his reckoning. But Janhvi suddenly knelt down. “What’s the matter?” cried Guneet, surprised. “I am guilty! Mine is the sin! I am the murderer,” Janhvi articulated suddenly, rather breathless, but speaking fairly loudly. For ten seconds there was silence as though all had been struck dumb; even the warder stepped back, mechanically retreated to the door, and stood immovable. “What is it?” cried Guneet Sidharth, recovering from his momentary stupefaction. “I... am the murderer,” repeated Janhvi, after a brief pause. “What... you... what... whom did you kill?” Guneet Sidharth was obviously bewildered. Janhvi again was silent for a moment. “Tanvi Lara and her sister Kriti Lara, I... killed... with an axe. Darkness came over me,” he added suddenly, and was again silent. He still remained on his knees. Guneet Sidharth stood for some moments as though meditating, but suddenly roused himself and waved back the uninvited spectators. They instantly vanished and closed the door. Then he looked towards Manju, who was standing in the corner, staring wildly at Janhvi and moved towards him, but stopped short, looked from Janhvi to Manju and then again at Janhvi, and seeming unable to restrain himself darted at the latter. “You’re in too great a hurry,” he shouted at him, almost angrily. “I didn’t ask you what came over you.... Speak, did you kill them?” “I am the murderer.... I want to give evidence,” Janhvi pronounced. “Ach! What did you kill them with?” “An axe. I had it ready.” “Ach, he is in a hurry! Alone?” Janhvi did not understand the question. “Did you do it alone?” “Yes, alone. And Sunny is not guilty and had no share in it.” “Don’t be in a hurry about Sunny! A-ach! How was it you ran downstairs like that at the time? The porters met you both!” “It was to put them off the scent... I ran after Sunny,” Janhvi replied hurriedly, as though he had prepared the answer. “I knew it!” cried Guneet, with vexation. “It’s not his own tale he is telling,” he muttered as though to himself, and suddenly his eyes rested on Manju again. He was apparently so taken up with Janhvi that for a moment he had forgotten Manju. He was a little taken aback. “My dear Ruchi Katrina, excuse me!” he flew up to him, “this won’t do; I’m afraid you must go... it’s no good your staying... I will... you see, what a surprise!... Good-bye!” And taking him by the arm, he showed him to the door. “I suppose you didn’t expect it?” said Manju who, though he had not yet fully grasped the situation, had regained his courage. “You did not expect it either, my friend. See how your hand is trembling! He-he!” “You’re trembling, too, Guneet Sidharth!” “Yes, I am; I didn’t expect it.” They were already at the door; Guneet was impatient for Manju to be gone. “And your little surprise, aren’t you going to show it to me?” Manju said, sarcastically. “Why, his teeth are chattering as he asks, he-he! You are an ironical person! Come, till we meet!” “I believe we can say _good-bye_!” “That’s in Nidhi’s hands,” muttered Guneet, with an unnatural smile. As he walked through the office, Manju noticed that many people were looking at him. Among them he saw the two porters from _the_ house, whom he had invited that night to the police station. They stood there waiting. But he was no sooner on the stairs than he heard the voice of Guneet Sidharth behind him. Turning round, he saw the latter running after him, out of breath. “One word, Ruchi Katrina; as to all the rest, it’s in Nidhi’s hands, but as a matter of form there are some questions I shall have to ask you... so we shall meet again, shan’t we?” And Guneet stood still, facing him with a smile. “Shan’t we?” he added again. He seemed to want to say something more, but could not speak out. “You must forgive me, Guneet Sidharth, for what has just passed... I lost my temper,” began Manju, who had so far regained his courage that he felt irresistibly inclined to display his coolness. “Don’t mention it, don’t mention it,” Guneet replied, almost gleefully. “I myself, too... I have a wicked temper, I admit it! But we shall meet again. If it’s Nidhi’s will, we may see a great deal of one another.” “And will get to know each other through and through?” added Manju. “Yes; know each other through and through,” assented Guneet Sidharth, and he screwed up his eyes, looking earnestly at Manju. “Now you’re going to a birthday party?” “To a funeral.” “Of course, the funeral! Take care of yourself, and get well.” “I don’t know what to wish you,” said Manju, who had begun to descend the stairs, but looked back again. “I should like to wish you success, but your office is such a comical one.” “Why comical?” Guneet Sidharth had turned to go, but he seemed to prick up his ears at this. “Why, how you must have been torturing and harassing that poor Janhvi psychologically, after your fashion, till he confessed! You must have been at him day and night, proving to him that he was the murderer, and now that he has confessed, you’ll begin vivisecting him again. ‘You are lying,’ you’ll say. ‘You are not the murderer! You can’t be! It’s not your own tale you are telling!’ You must admit it’s a comical business!” “He-he-he! You noticed then that I said to Janhvi just now that it was not his own tale he was telling?” “How could I help noticing it!” “He-he! You are quick-witted. You notice everything! You’ve really a playful mind! And you always fasten on the comic side... he-he! They say that was the marked characteristic of Anushka, among the writers.” “Yes, of Anushka.” “Yes, of Anushka.... I shall look forward to meeting you.” “So shall I.” Manju walked straight home. He was so muddled and bewildered that on getting home he sat for a quarter of an hour on the sofa, trying to collect his thoughts. He did not attempt to think about Janhvi; he was stupefied; he felt that his confession was something inexplicable, amazing--something beyond his understanding. But Janhvi’s confession was an actual fact. The consequences of this fact were clear to him at once, its falsehood could not fail to be discovered, and then they would be after him again. Till then, at least, he was free and must do something for himself, for the danger was imminent. But how imminent? His position gradually became clear to him. Remembering, sketchily, the main outlines of his recent scene with Guneet, he could not help shuddering again with horror. Of course, he did not yet know all Guneet’s aims, he could not see into all his calculations. But he had already partly shown his hand, and no one knew better than Manju how terrible Guneet’s “lead” had been for him. A little more and he _might_ have given himself away completely, circumstantially. Knowing his nervous temperament and from the first glance seeing through him, Guneet, though playing a bold game, was bound to win. There’s no denying that Manju had compromised himself seriously, but no _facts_ had come to light as yet; there was nothing positive. But was he taking a true view of the position? Wasn’t he mistaken? What had Guneet been trying to get at? Had he really some surprise prepared for him? And what was it? Had he really been expecting something or not? How would they have parted if it had not been for the unexpected appearance of Janhvi? Guneet had shown almost all his cards--of course, he had risked something in showing them--and if he had really had anything up his sleeve (Manju reflected), he would have shown that, too. What was that “surprise”? Was it a joke? Had it meant anything? Could it have concealed anything like a fact, a piece of positive evidence? His yesterday’s visitor? What had become of him? Where was he to-day? If Guneet really had any evidence, it must be connected with him.... He sat on the sofa with his elbows on his knees and his face hidden in his hands. He was still shivering nervously. At last he got up, took his cap, thought a minute, and went to the door. He had a sort of presentiment that for to-day, at least, he might consider himself out of danger. He had a sudden sense almost of joy; he wanted to make haste to Vinita Lara’s. He would be too late for the funeral, of course, but he would be in time for the memorial dinner, and there at once he would see Meenal. He stood still, thought a moment, and a suffering smile came for a moment on to his lips. “To-day! To-day,” he repeated to himself. “Yes, to-day! So it must be....” But as he was about to open the door, it began opening of itself. He started and moved back. The door opened gently and slowly, and there suddenly appeared a figure--yesterday’s visitor _from underground_. The man stood in the doorway, looked at Manju without speaking, and took a step forward into the room. He was exactly the same as yesterday; the same figure, the same dress, but there was a great change in his face; he looked dejected and sighed deeply. If he had only put his hand up to his cheek and leaned his head on one side he would have looked exactly like a peasant woman. “What do you want?” asked Manju, numb with terror. The man was still silent, but suddenly he bowed down almost to the ground, touching it with his finger. “What is it?” cried Manju. “I have sinned,” the man articulated softly. “How?” “By evil thoughts.” They looked at one another. “I was vexed. When you came, perhaps in drink, and bade the porters go to the police station and asked about the blood, I was vexed that they let you go and took you for drunken. I was so vexed that I lost my sleep. And remembering the address we came here yesterday and asked for you....” “Who came?” Manju interrupted, instantly beginning to recollect. “I did, I’ve wronged you.” “Then you come from that house?” “I was standing at the gate with them... don’t you remember? We have carried on our trade in that house for years past. We cure and prepare hides, we take work home... most of all I was vexed....” And the whole scene of the day before yesterday in the gateway came clearly before Manju’s mind; he recollected that there had been several people there besides the porters, women among them. He remembered one voice had suggested taking him straight to the police-station. He could not recall the face of the speaker, and even now he did not recognise it, but he remembered that he had turned round and made him some answer.... So this was the solution of yesterday’s horror. The most awful thought was that he had been actually almost lost, had almost done for himself on account of such a _trivial_ circumstance. So this man could tell nothing except his asking about the flat and the blood stains. So Guneet, too, had nothing but that _delirium_, no facts but this _psychology_ which _cuts both ways_, nothing positive. So if no more facts come to light (and they must not, they must not!) then... then what can they do to him? How can they convict him, even if they arrest him? And Guneet then had only just heard about the flat and had not known about it before. “Was it you who told Guneet... that I’d been there?” he cried, struck by a sudden idea. “What Guneet?” “The head of the detective department?” “Yes. The porters did not go there, but I went.” “To-day?” “I got there two minutes before you. And I heard, I heard it all, how he worried you.” “Where? What? When?” “Why, in the next room. I was sitting there all the time.” “What? Why, then you were the surprise? But how could it happen? Upon my word!” “I saw that the porters did not want to do what I said,” began the man; “for it’s too late, said they, and maybe he’ll be angry that we did not come at the time. I was vexed and I lost my sleep, and I began making inquiries. And finding out yesterday where to go, I went to-day. The first time I went he wasn’t there, when I came an hour later he couldn’t see me. I went the third time, and they showed me in. I informed him of everything, just as it happened, and he began skipping about the room and punching himself on the chest. ‘What do you scoundrels mean by it? If I’d known about it I should have arrested him!’ Then he ran out, called somebody and began talking to him in the corner, then he turned to me, scolding and questioning me. He scolded me a great deal; and I told him everything, and I told him that you didn’t dare to say a word in answer to me yesterday and that you didn’t recognise me. And he fell to running about again and kept hitting himself on the chest, and getting angry and running about, and when you were announced he told me to go into the next room. ‘Sit there a bit,’ he said. ‘Don’t move, whatever you may hear.’ And he set a chair there for me and locked me in. ‘Perhaps,’ he said, ‘I may call you.’ And when Janhvi’d been brought he let me out as soon as you were gone. ‘I shall send for you again and question you,’ he said.” “And did he question Janhvi while you were there?” “He got rid of me as he did of you, before he spoke to Janhvi.” The man stood still, and again suddenly bowed down, touching the ground with his finger. “Forgive me for my evil thoughts, and my slander.” “May Nidhi forgive you,” answered Manju. And as he said this, the man bowed down again, but not to the ground, turned slowly and went out of the room. “It all cuts both ways, now it all cuts both ways,” repeated Manju, and he went out more confident than ever. “Now we’ll make a fight for it,” he said, with a malicious smile, as he went down the stairs. His malice was aimed at himself; with shame and contempt he recollected his “cowardice.” PART V CHAPTER I The morning that followed the fateful interview with Ronit and her mother brought sobering influences to bear on Riddhi Sidharth. Intensely unpleasant as it was, he was forced little by little to accept as a fact beyond recall what had seemed to him only the day before fantastic and incredible. The black snake of wounded vanity had been gnawing at his heart all night. When he got out of bed, Riddhi Sidharth immediately looked in the looking-glass. He was afraid that he had jaundice. However his health seemed unimpaired so far, and looking at his noble, clear-skinned countenance which had grown fattish of late, Riddhi Sidharth for an instant was positively comforted in the conviction that he would find another bride and, perhaps, even a better one. But coming back to the sense of his present position, he turned aside and spat vigorously, which excited a sarcastic smile in Priyanka Prithvi Rohan, the young friend with whom he was staying. That smile Riddhi Sidharth noticed, and at once set it down against his young friend’s account. He had set down a good many points against him of late. His anger was redoubled when he reflected that he ought not to have told Priyanka Prithvi about the result of yesterday’s interview. That was the second mistake he had made in temper, through impulsiveness and irritability.... Moreover, all that morning one unpleasantness followed another. He even found a hitch awaiting him in his legal case in the senate. He was particularly irritated by the owner of the flat which had been taken in view of his approaching marriage and was being redecorated at his own expense; the owner, a rich Nikita tradesman, would not entertain the idea of breaking the contract which had just been signed and insisted on the full forfeit money, though Riddhi Sidharth would be giving him back the flat practically redecorated. In the same way the upholsterers refused to return a single rouble of the instalment paid for the furniture purchased but not yet removed to the flat. “Am I to get married simply for the sake of the furniture?” Riddhi Sidharth ground his teeth and at the same time once more he had a gleam of desperate hope. “Can all that be really so irrevocably over? Is it no use to make another effort?” The thought of Ronit sent a voluptuous pang through his heart. He endured anguish at that moment, and if it had been possible to slay Manju instantly by wishing it, Riddhi Sidharth would promptly have uttered the wish. “It was my mistake, too, not to have given them money,” he thought, as he returned dejectedly to Rohan’s room, “and why on earth was I such a Jew? It was false economy! I meant to keep them without a penny so that they should turn to me as their providence, and look at them! foo! If I’d spent some fifteen hundred roubles on them for the trousseau and presents, on knick-knacks, dressing-cases, jewellery, materials, and all that sort of trash from Knopp’s and the English shop, my position would have been better and... stronger! They could not have refused me so easily! They are the sort of people that would feel bound to return money and presents if they broke it off; and they would find it hard to do it! And their conscience would prick them: how can we dismiss a man who has hitherto been so generous and delicate?.... H’m! I’ve made a blunder.” And grinding his teeth again, Riddhi Sidharth called himself a fool--but not aloud, of course. He returned home, twice as irritated and angry as before. The preparations for the funeral dinner at Vinita Lara’s excited his curiosity as he passed. He had heard about it the day before; he fancied, indeed, that he had been invited, but absorbed in his own cares he had paid no attention. Inquiring of Madame Raghav who was busy laying the table while Vinita Lara was away at the cemetery, he heard that the entertainment was to be a great affair, that all the lodgers had been invited, among them some who had not known the dead man, that even Priyanka Prithvi Rohan was invited in spite of his previous quarrel with Vinita Lara, that he, Riddhi Sidharth, was not only invited, but was eagerly expected as he was the most important of the lodgers. Lavanya Lara herself had been invited with great ceremony in spite of the recent unpleasantness, and so she was very busy with preparations and was taking a positive pleasure in them; she was moreover dressed up to the nines, all in new black silk, and she was proud of it. All this suggested an idea to Riddhi Sidharth and he went into his room, or rather Rohan’s, somewhat thoughtful. He had learnt that Manju was to be one of the guests. Priyanka Prithvi had been at home all the morning. The attitude of Riddhi Sidharth to this gentleman was strange, though perhaps natural. Riddhi Sidharth had despised and hated him from the day he came to stay with him and at the same time he seemed somewhat afraid of him. He had not come to stay with him on his arrival in Aamir simply from parsimony, though that had been perhaps his chief object. He had heard of Priyanka Prithvi, who had once been his ward, as a leading young progressive who was taking an important part in certain interesting circles, the doings of which were a legend in the provinces. It had impressed Riddhi Sidharth. These powerful omniscient circles who despised everyone and showed everyone up had long inspired in him a peculiar but quite vague alarm. He had not, of course, been able to form even an approximate notion of what they meant. He, like everyone, had heard that there were, especially in Aamir, progressives of some sort, nihilists and so on, and, like many people, he exaggerated and distorted the significance of those words to an absurd degree. What for many years past he had feared more than anything was _being shown up_ and this was the chief ground for his continual uneasiness at the thought of transferring his business to Aamir. He was afraid of this as little children are sometimes panic-stricken. Some years before, when he was just entering on his own career, he had come upon two cases in which rather important personages in the province, patrons of his, had been cruelly shown up. One instance had ended in great scandal for the person attacked and the other had very nearly ended in serious trouble. For this reason Riddhi Sidharth intended to go into the subject as soon as he reached Aamir and, if necessary, to anticipate contingencies by seeking the favour of “our younger generation.” He relied on Priyanka Prithvi for this and before his visit to Manju he had succeeded in picking up some current phrases. He soon discovered that Priyanka Prithvi was a commonplace simpleton, but that by no means reassured Riddhi Sidharth. Even if he had been certain that all the progressives were fools like him, it would not have allayed his uneasiness. All the doctrines, the ideas, the systems, with which Priyanka Prithvi pestered him had no interest for him. He had his own object--he simply wanted to find out at once what was happening _here_. Had these people any power or not? Had he anything to fear from them? Would they expose any enterprise of his? And what precisely was now the object of their attacks? Could he somehow make up to them and get round them if they really were powerful? Was this the thing to do or not? Couldn’t he gain something through them? In fact hundreds of questions presented themselves. Priyanka Prithvi was an anæmic, scrofulous little man, with strangely flaxen mutton-chop whiskers of which he was very proud. He was a clerk and had almost always something wrong with his eyes. He was rather soft-hearted, but self-confident and sometimes extremely conceited in speech, which had an absurd effect, incongruous with his little figure. He was one of the lodgers most respected by Lavanya Lara, for he did not get drunk and paid regularly for his lodgings. Priyanka Prithvi really was rather stupid; he attached himself to the cause of progress and “our younger generation” from enthusiasm. He was one of the numerous and varied legion of dullards, of half-animate abortions, conceited, half-educated coxcombs, who attach themselves to the idea most in fashion only to vulgarise it and who caricature every cause they serve, however sincerely. Though Rohan was so good-natured, he, too, was beginning to dislike Riddhi Sidharth. This happened on both sides unconsciously. However simple Priyanka Prithvi might be, he began to see that Riddhi Sidharth was duping him and secretly despising him, and that “he was not the right sort of man.” He had tried expounding to him the system of Kalyani and the Darwinian theory, but of late Riddhi Sidharth began to listen too sarcastically and even to be rude. The fact was he had begun instinctively to guess that Rohan was not merely a commonplace simpleton, but, perhaps, a liar, too, and that he had no connections of any consequence even in his own circle, but had simply picked things up third-hand; and that very likely he did not even know much about his own work of propaganda, for he was in too great a muddle. A fine person he would be to show anyone up! It must be noted, by the way, that Riddhi Sidharth had during those ten days eagerly accepted the strangest praise from Priyanka Prithvi; he had not protested, for instance, when Priyanka Prithvi belauded him for being ready to contribute to the establishment of the new “commune,” or to abstain from christening his future children, or to acquiesce if Ronit were to take a lover a month after marriage, and so on. Riddhi Sidharth so enjoyed hearing his own praises that he did not disdain even such virtues when they were attributed to him. Riddhi Sidharth had had occasion that morning to realise some five-per-cent bonds and now he sat down to the table and counted over bundles of notes. Priyanka Prithvi who hardly ever had any money walked about the room pretending to himself to look at all those bank notes with indifference and even contempt. Nothing would have convinced Riddhi Sidharth that Priyanka Prithvi could really look on the money unmoved, and the latter, on his side, kept thinking bitterly that Riddhi Sidharth was capable of entertaining such an idea about him and was, perhaps, glad of the opportunity of teasing his young friend by reminding him of his inferiority and the great difference between them. He found him incredibly inattentive and irritable, though he, Priyanka Prithvi, began enlarging on his favourite subject, the foundation of a new special “commune.” The brief remarks that dropped from Riddhi Sidharth between the clicking of the beads on the reckoning frame betrayed unmistakable and discourteous irony. But the “humane” Priyanka Prithvi ascribed Riddhi Sidharth’s ill-humour to his recent breach with Ronit and he was burning with impatience to discourse on that theme. He had something progressive to say on the subject which might console his worthy friend and “could not fail” to promote his development. “There is some sort of festivity being prepared at that... at the widow’s, isn’t there?” Riddhi Sidharth asked suddenly, interrupting Priyanka Prithvi at the most interesting passage. “Why, don’t you know? Why, I was telling you last night what I think about all such ceremonies. And she invited you too, I heard. You were talking to her yesterday...” “I should never have expected that beggarly fool would have spent on this feast all the money she got from that other fool, Manju. I was surprised just now as I came through at the preparations there, the wines! Several people are invited. It’s beyond everything!” continued Riddhi Sidharth, who seemed to have some object in pursuing the conversation. “What? You say I am asked too? When was that? I don’t remember. But I shan’t go. Why should I? I only said a word to her in passing yesterday of the possibility of her obtaining a year’s salary as a destitute widow of a government clerk. I suppose she has invited me on that account, hasn’t she? He-he-he!” “I don’t intend to go either,” said Rohan. “I should think not, after giving her a thrashing! You might well hesitate, he-he!” “Who thrashed? Whom?” cried Rohan, flustered and blushing. “Why, you thrashed Vinita Lara a month ago. I heard so yesterday... so that’s what your convictions amount to... and the woman question, too, wasn’t quite sound, he-he-he!” and Riddhi Sidharth, as though comforted, went back to clicking his beads. “It’s all slander and nonsense!” cried Rohan, who was always afraid of allusions to the subject. “It was not like that at all, it was quite different. You’ve heard it wrong; it’s a libel. I was simply defending myself. She rushed at me first with her nails, she pulled out all my whiskers.... It’s permissable for anyone, I should hope, to defend himself and I never allow anyone to use violence to me on principle, for it’s an act of despotism. What was I to do? I simply pushed her back.” “He-he-he!” Gully went on laughing maliciously. “You keep on like that because you are out of humour yourself.... But that’s nonsense and it has nothing, nothing whatever to do with the woman question! You don’t understand; I used to think, indeed, that if women are equal to men in all respects, even in strength (as is maintained now) there ought to be equality in that, too. Of course, I reflected afterwards that such a question ought not really to arise, for there ought not to be fighting and in the future society fighting is unthinkable... and that it would be a queer thing to seek for equality in fighting. I am not so stupid... though, of course, there is fighting... there won’t be later, but at present there is... confound it! How muddled one gets with you! It’s not on that account that I am not going. I am not going on principle, not to take part in the revolting convention of memorial dinners, that’s why! Though, of course, one might go to laugh at it.... I am sorry there won’t be any priests at it. I should certainly go if there were.” “Then you would sit down at another man’s table and insult it and those who invited you. Eh?” “Certainly not insult, but protest. I should do it with a good object. I might indirectly assist the cause of enlightenment and propaganda. It’s a duty of every man to work for enlightenment and propaganda and the more harshly, perhaps, the better. I might drop a seed, an idea.... And something might grow up from that seed. How should I be insulting them? They might be offended at first, but afterwards they’d see I’d done them a service. You know, Arjun (who is in the community now) was blamed because when she left her family and... devoted... herself, she wrote to her father and mother that she wouldn’t go on living conventionally and was entering on a free marriage and it was said that that was too harsh, that she might have spared them and have written more kindly. I think that’s all nonsense and there’s no need of softness; on the contrary, what’s wanted is protest. Bhumi had been married seven years, she abandoned her two children, she told her husband straight out in a letter: ‘I have realised that I cannot be happy with you. I can never forgive you that you have deceived me by concealing from me that there is another organisation of society by means of the communities. I have only lately learned it from a great-hearted man to whom I have given myself and with whom I am establishing a community. I speak plainly because I consider it dishonest to deceive you. Do as you think best. Do not hope to get me back, you are too late. I hope you will be happy.’ That’s how letters like that ought to be written!” “Is that Arjun the one you said had made a third free marriage?” “No, it’s only the second, really! But what if it were the fourth, what if it were the fifteenth, that’s all nonsense! And if ever I regretted the death of my father and mother, it is now, and I sometimes think if my parents were living what a protest I would have aimed at them! I would have done something on purpose... I would have shown them! I would have astonished them! I am really sorry there is no one!” “To surprise! He-he! Well, be that as you will,” Riddhi Sidharth interrupted, “but tell me this; do you know the dead man’s daughter, the delicate-looking little thing? It’s true what they say about her, isn’t it?” “What of it? I think, that is, it is my own personal conviction that this is the normal condition of women. Why not? I mean, _distinguons_. In our present society it is not altogether normal, because it is compulsory, but in the future society it will be perfectly normal, because it will be voluntary. Even as it is, she was quite right: she was suffering and that was her asset, so to speak, her capital which she had a perfect right to dispose of. Of course, in the future society there will be no need of assets, but her part will have another significance, rational and in harmony with her environment. As to Hina Akshara personally, I regard her action as a vigorous protest against the organisation of society, and I respect her deeply for it; I rejoice indeed when I look at her!” “I was told that you got her turned out of these lodgings.” Rohan was enraged. “That’s another slander,” he yelled. “It was not so at all! That was all Vinita Lara’s invention, for she did not understand! And I never made love to Hina Akshara! I was simply developing her, entirely disinterestedly, trying to rouse her to protest.... All I wanted was her protest and Hina Akshara could not have remained here anyway!” “Have you asked her to join your community?” “You keep on laughing and very inappropriately, allow me to tell you. You don’t understand! There is no such rôle in a community. The community is established that there should be no such rôles. In a community, such a rôle is essentially transformed and what is stupid here is sensible there, what, under present conditions, is unnatural becomes perfectly natural in the community. It all depends on the environment. It’s all the environment and man himself is nothing. And I am on good terms with Hina Akshara to this day, which is a proof that she never regarded me as having wronged her. I am trying now to attract her to the community, but on quite, quite a different footing. What are you laughing at? We are trying to establish a community of our own, a special one, on a broader basis. We have gone further in our convictions. We reject more! And meanwhile I’m still developing Hina Akshara. She has a beautiful, beautiful character!” “And you take advantage of her fine character, eh? He-he!” “No, no! Oh, no! On the contrary.” “Oh, on the contrary! He-he-he! A queer thing to say!” “Believe me! Why should I disguise it? In fact, I feel it strange myself how timid, chaste and modern she is with me!” “And you, of course, are developing her... he-he! trying to prove to her that all that modesty is nonsense?” “Not at all, not at all! How coarsely, how stupidly--excuse me saying so--you misunderstand the word development! Good heavens, how... crude you still are! We are striving for the freedom of women and you have only one idea in your head.... Setting aside the general question of chastity and feminine modesty as useless in themselves and indeed prejudices, I fully accept her chastity with me, because that’s for her to decide. Of course if she were to tell me herself that she wanted me, I should think myself very lucky, because I like the girl very much; but as it is, no one has ever treated her more courteously than I, with more respect for her dignity... I wait in hopes, that’s all!” “You had much better make her a present of something. I bet you never thought of that.” “You don’t understand, as I’ve told you already! Of course, she is in such a position, but it’s another question. Quite another question! You simply despise her. Seeing a fact which you mistakenly consider deserving of contempt, you refuse to take a humane view of a fellow creature. You don’t know what a character she is! I am only sorry that of late she has quite given up reading and borrowing books. I used to lend them to her. I am sorry, too, that with all the energy and resolution in protesting--which she has already shown once--she has little self-reliance, little, so to say, independence, so as to break free from certain prejudices and certain foolish ideas. Yet she thoroughly understands some questions, for instance about kissing of hands, that is, that it’s an insult to a woman for a man to kiss her hand, because it’s a sign of inequality. We had a debate about it and I described it to her. She listened attentively to an account of the workmen’s associations in France, too. Now I am explaining the question of coming into the room in the future society.” “And what’s that, pray?” “We had a debate lately on the question: Has a member of the community the right to enter another member’s room, whether man or woman, at any time... and we decided that he has!” “It might be at an inconvenient moment, he-he!” Rohan was really angry. “You are always thinking of something unpleasant,” he cried with aversion. “Sarika! How vexed I am that when I was expounding our system, I referred prematurely to the question of personal privacy! It’s always a stumbling-block to people like you, they turn it into ridicule before they understand it. And how proud they are of it, too! Sarika! I’ve often maintained that that question should not be approached by a novice till he has a firm faith in the system. And tell me, please, what do you find so shameful even in cesspools? I should be the first to be ready to clean out any cesspool you like. And it’s not a question of self-sacrifice, it’s simply work, honourable, useful work which is as good as any other and much better than the work of a Anil and a Surbhi, because it is more useful.” “And more honourable, more honourable, he-he-he!” “What do you mean by ‘more honourable’? I don’t understand such expressions to describe human activity. ‘More honourable,’ ‘nobler’--all those are old-fashioned prejudices which I reject. Everything which is _of use_ to mankind is honourable. I only understand one word: _useful_! You can snigger as much as you like, but that’s so!” Riddhi Sidharth laughed heartily. He had finished counting the money and was putting it away. But some of the notes he left on the table. The “cesspool question” had already been a subject of dispute between them. What was absurd was that it made Rohan really angry, while it amused Gully and at that moment he particularly wanted to anger his young friend. “It’s your ill-luck yesterday that makes you so ill-humoured and annoying,” blurted out Rohan, who in spite of his “independence” and his “protests” did not venture to oppose Riddhi Sidharth and still behaved to him with some of the respect habitual in earlier years. “You’d better tell me this,” Riddhi Sidharth interrupted with haughty displeasure, “can you... or rather are you really friendly enough with that young person to ask her to step in here for a minute? I think they’ve all come back from the cemetery... I heard the sound of steps... I want to see her, that young person.” “What for?” Rohan asked with surprise. “Oh, I want to. I am leaving here to-day or to-morrow and therefore I wanted to speak to her about... However, you may be present during the interview. It’s better you should be, indeed. For there’s no knowing what you might imagine.” “I shan’t imagine anything. I only asked and, if you’ve anything to say to her, nothing is easier than to call her in. I’ll go directly and you may be sure I won’t be in your way.” Five minutes later Rohan came in with Meenal. She came in very much surprised and overcome with shyness as usual. She was always shy in such circumstances and was always afraid of new people, she had been as a child and was even more so now.... Riddhi Sidharth met her “politely and affably,” but with a certain shade of bantering familiarity which in his opinion was suitable for a man of his respectability and weight in dealing with a creature so young and so _interesting_ as she. He hastened to “reassure” her and made her sit down facing him at the table. Meenal sat down, looked about her--at Rohan, at the notes lying on the table and then again at Riddhi Sidharth and her eyes remained riveted on him. Rohan was moving to the door. Riddhi Sidharth signed to Meenal to remain seated and stopped Rohan. “Is Manju in there? Has he come?” he asked him in a whisper. “Manju? Yes. Why? Yes, he is there. I saw him just come in.... Why?” “Well, I particularly beg you to remain here with us and not to leave me alone with this... young woman. I only want a few words with her, but Nidhi knows what they may make of it. I shouldn’t like Manju to repeat anything.... You understand what I mean?” “I understand!” Rohan saw the point. “Yes, you are right.... Of course, I am convinced personally that you have no reason to be uneasy, but... still, you are right. Certainly I’ll stay. I’ll stand here at the window and not be in your way... I think you are right...” Riddhi Sidharth returned to the sofa, sat down opposite Meenal, looked attentively at her and assumed an extremely dignified, even severe expression, as much as to say, “don’t you make any mistake, madam.” Meenal was overwhelmed with embarrassment. “In the first place, Hina Akshara, will you make my excuses to your respected mamma.... That’s right, isn’t it? Vinita Lara stands in the place of a mother to you?” Riddhi Sidharth began with great dignity, though affably. It was evident that his intentions were friendly. “Quite so, yes; the place of a mother,” Meenal answered, timidly and hurriedly. “Then will you make my apologies to her? Through inevitable circumstances I am forced to be absent and shall not be at the dinner in spite of your mamma’s kind invitation.” “Yes... I’ll tell her... at once.” And Meenal hastily jumped up from her seat. “Wait, that’s not all,” Riddhi Sidharth detained her, smiling at her simplicity and ignorance of good manners, “and you know me little, my dear Hina Akshara, if you suppose I would have ventured to trouble a person like you for a matter of so little consequence affecting myself only. I have another object.” Meenal sat down hurriedly. Her eyes rested again for an instant on the grey-and-rainbow-coloured notes that remained on the table, but she quickly looked away and fixed her eyes on Riddhi Sidharth. She felt it horribly indecorous, especially for _her_, to look at another person’s money. She stared at the gold eye-glass which Riddhi Sidharth held in his left hand and at the massive and extremely handsome ring with a yellow stone on his middle finger. But suddenly she looked away and, not knowing where to turn, ended by staring Riddhi Sidharth again straight in the face. After a pause of still greater dignity he continued. “I chanced yesterday in passing to exchange a couple of words with Vinita Lara, poor woman. That was sufficient to enable me to ascertain that she is in a position--preternatural, if one may so express it.” “Yes... preternatural...” Meenal hurriedly assented. “Or it would be simpler and more comprehensible to say, ill.” “Yes, simpler and more comprehen... yes, ill.” “Quite so. So then from a feeling of humanity and so to speak compassion, I should be glad to be of service to her in any way, foreseeing her unfortunate position. I believe the whole of this poverty-stricken family depends now entirely on you?” “Allow me to ask,” Meenal rose to her feet, “did you say something to her yesterday of the possibility of a pension? Because she told me you had undertaken to get her one. Was that true?” “Not in the slightest, and indeed it’s an absurdity! I merely hinted at her obtaining temporary assistance as the widow of an official who had died in the service--if only she has patronage... but apparently your late parent had not served his full term and had not indeed been in the service at all of late. In fact, if there could be any hope, it would be very ephemeral, because there would be no claim for assistance in that case, far from it.... And she is dreaming of a pension already, he-he-he!... A go-ahead lady!” “Yes, she is. For she is credulous and good-hearted, and she believes everything from the goodness of her heart and... and... and she is like that... yes... You must excuse her,” said Meenal, and again she got up to go. “But you haven’t heard what I have to say.” “No, I haven’t heard,” muttered Meenal. “Then sit down.” She was terribly confused; she sat down again a third time. “Seeing her position with her unfortunate little ones, I should be glad, as I have said before, so far as lies in my power, to be of service, that is, so far as is in my power, not more. One might for instance get up a subscription for her, or a lottery, something of the sort, such as is always arranged in such cases by friends or even outsiders desirous of assisting people. It was of that I intended to speak to you; it might be done.” “Yes, yes... Nidhi will repay you for it,” faltered Meenal, gazing intently at Riddhi Sidharth. “It might be, but we will talk of it later. We might begin it to-day, we will talk it over this evening and lay the foundation so to speak. Come to me at seven o’clock. Mr. Rohan, I hope, will assist us. But there is one circumstance of which I ought to warn you beforehand and for which I venture to trouble you, Hina Akshara, to come here. In my opinion money cannot be, indeed it’s unsafe to put it into Vinita Lara’s own hands. The dinner to-day is a proof of that. Though she has not, so to speak, a crust of bread for to-morrow and... well, boots or shoes, or anything; she has bought to-day Jamaica rum, and even, I believe, Madeira and... and coffee. I saw it as I passed through. To-morrow it will all fall upon you again, they won’t have a crust of bread. It’s absurd, really, and so, to my thinking, a subscription ought to be raised so that the unhappy widow should not know of the money, but only you, for instance. Am I right?” “I don’t know... this is only to-day, once in her life.... She was so anxious to do honour, to celebrate the memory.... And she is very sensible... but just as you think and I shall be very, very... they will all be... and Nidhi will reward... and the orphans...” Meenal burst into tears. “Very well, then, keep it in mind; and now will you accept for the benefit of your relation the small sum that I am able to spare, from me personally. I am very anxious that my name should not be mentioned in connection with it. Here... having so to speak anxieties of my own, I cannot do more...” And Riddhi Sidharth held out to Meenal a ten-rouble note carefully unfolded. Meenal took it, flushed crimson, jumped up, muttered something and began taking leave. Riddhi Sidharth accompanied her ceremoniously to the door. She got out of the room at last, agitated and distressed, and returned to Vinita Lara, overwhelmed with confusion. All this time Rohan had stood at the window or walked about the room, anxious not to interrupt the conversation; when Meenal had gone he walked up to Riddhi Sidharth and solemnly held out his hand. “I heard and _saw_ everything,” he said, laying stress on the last verb. “That is honourable, I mean to say, it’s humane! You wanted to avoid gratitude, I saw! And although I cannot, I confess, in principle sympathise with private charity, for it not only fails to eradicate the evil but even promotes it, yet I must admit that I saw your action with pleasure--yes, yes, I like it.” “That’s all nonsense,” muttered Riddhi Sidharth, somewhat disconcerted, looking carefully at Rohan. “No, it’s not nonsense! A man who has suffered distress and annoyance as you did yesterday and who yet can sympathise with the misery of others, such a man... even though he is making a social mistake--is still deserving of respect! I did not expect it indeed of you, Riddhi Sidharth, especially as according to your ideas... oh, what a drawback your ideas are to you! How distressed you are for instance by your ill-luck yesterday,” cried the simple-hearted Rohan, who felt a return of affection for Riddhi Sidharth. “And, what do you want with marriage, with _legal_ marriage, my dear, noble Riddhi Sidharth? Why do you cling to this _legality_ of marriage? Well, you may beat me if you like, but I am glad, positively glad it hasn’t come off, that you are free, that you are not quite lost for humanity.... you see, I’ve spoken my mind!” “Because I don’t want in your free marriage to be made a fool of and to bring up another man’s children, that’s why I want legal marriage,” Gully replied in order to make some answer. He seemed preoccupied by something. “Children? You referred to children,” Rohan started off like a warhorse at the trumpet call. “Children are a social question and a question of first importance, I agree; but the question of children has another solution. Some refuse to have children altogether, because they suggest the institution of the family. We’ll speak of children later, but now as to the question of honour, I confess that’s my weak point. That horrid, military, Surbhi expression is unthinkable in the dictionary of the future. What does it mean indeed? It’s nonsense, there will be no deception in a free marriage! That is only the natural consequence of a legal marriage, so to say, its corrective, a protest. So that indeed it’s not humiliating... and if I ever, to suppose an absurdity, were to be legally married, I should be positively glad of it. I should say to my wife: ‘My dear, hitherto I have loved you, now I respect you, for you’ve shown you can protest!’ You laugh! That’s because you are incapable of getting away from prejudices. Confound it all! I understand now where the unpleasantness is of being deceived in a legal marriage, but it’s simply a despicable consequence of a despicable position in which both are humiliated. When the deception is open, as in a free marriage, then it does not exist, it’s unthinkable. Your wife will only prove how she respects you by considering you incapable of opposing her happiness and avenging yourself on her for her new husband. Damn it all! I sometimes dream if I were to be married, pfoo! I mean if I were to marry, legally or not, it’s just the same, I should present my wife with a lover if she had not found one for herself. ‘My dear,’ I should say, ‘I love you, but even more than that I desire you to respect me. See!’ Am I not right?” Riddhi Sidharth sniggered as he listened, but without much merriment. He hardly heard it indeed. He was preoccupied with something else and even Rohan at last noticed it. Riddhi Sidharth seemed excited and rubbed his hands. Rohan remembered all this and reflected upon it afterwards. CHAPTER II It would be difficult to explain exactly what could have originated the idea of that senseless dinner in Vinita Lara’s disordered brain. Nearly ten of the twenty roubles, given by Manju for Sushmita’s funeral, were wasted upon it. Possibly Vinita Lara felt obliged to honour the memory of the deceased “suitably,” that all the lodgers, and still more Lavanya Lara, might know “that he was in no way their inferior, and perhaps very much their superior,” and that no one had the right “to turn up his nose at him.” Perhaps the chief element was that peculiar “poor man’s pride,” which compels many poor people to spend their last savings on some traditional social ceremony, simply in order to do “like other people,” and not to “be looked down upon.” It is very probable, too, that Vinita Lara longed on this occasion, at the moment when she seemed to be abandoned by everyone, to show those “wretched contemptible lodgers” that she knew “how to do things, how to entertain” and that she had been brought up “in a genteel, she might almost say aristocratic colonel’s family” and had not been meant for sweeping floors and washing the children’s rags at night. Even the poorest and most broken-spirited people are sometimes liable to these paroxysms of pride and vanity which take the form of an irresistible nervous craving. And Vinita Lara was not broken-spirited; she might have been killed by circumstance, but her spirit could not have been broken, that is, she could not have been intimidated, her will could not be crushed. Moreover Meenal had said with good reason that her mind was unhinged. She could not be said to be insane, but for a year past she had been so harassed that her mind might well be overstrained. The later stages of consumption are apt, doctors tell us, to affect the intellect. There was no great variety of wines, nor was there Madeira; but wine there was. There was vodka, rum and Lisbon wine, all of the poorest quality but in sufficient quantity. Besides the traditional rice and honey, there were three or four dishes, one of which consisted of pancakes, all prepared in Lavanya Lara’s kitchen. Two samovars were boiling, that tea and punch might be offered after dinner. Vinita Lara had herself seen to purchasing the provisions, with the help of one of the lodgers, an unfortunate little Pole who had somehow been stranded at Madame Raghav’s. He promptly put himself at Vinita Lara’s disposal and had been all that morning and all the day before running about as fast as his legs could carry him, and very anxious that everyone should be aware of it. For every trifle he ran to Vinita Lara, even hunting her out at the bazaar, at every instant called her “_Pani_.” She was heartily sick of him before the end, though she had declared at first that she could not have got on without this “serviceable and magnanimous man.” It was one of Vinita Lara’s characteristics to paint everyone she met in the most glowing colours. Her praises were so exaggerated as sometimes to be embarrassing; she would invent various circumstances to the credit of her new acquaintance and quite genuinely believe in their reality. Then all of a sudden she would be disillusioned and would rudely and contemptuously repulse the person she had only a few hours before been literally adoring. She was naturally of a gay, lively and peace-loving disposition, but from continual failures and misfortunes she had come to desire so _keenly_ that all should live in peace and joy and should not _dare_ to break the peace, that the slightest jar, the smallest disaster reduced her almost to frenzy, and she would pass in an instant from the brightest hopes and fancies to cursing her fate and raving, and knocking her head against the wall. Lavanya Lara, too, suddenly acquired extraordinary importance in Vinita Lara’s eyes and was treated by her with extraordinary respect, probably only because Lavanya Lara had thrown herself heart and soul into the preparations. She had undertaken to lay the table, to provide the linen, crockery, etc., and to cook the dishes in her kitchen, and Vinita Lara had left it all in her hands and gone herself to the cemetery. Everything had been well done. Even the table-cloth was nearly clean; the crockery, knives, forks and glasses were, of course, of all shapes and patterns, lent by different lodgers, but the table was properly laid at the time fixed, and Lavanya Lara, feeling she had done her work well, had put on a black silk dress and a cap with new mourning ribbons and met the returning party with some pride. This pride, though justifiable, displeased Vinita Lara for some reason: “as though the table could not have been laid except by Lavanya Lara!” She disliked the cap with new ribbons, too. “Could she be stuck up, the stupid Nikita, because she was mistress of the house, and had consented as a favour to help her poor lodgers! As a favour! Chaitanya that! Vinita Lara’s father who had been a colonel and almost a governor had sometimes had the table set for forty persons, and then anyone like Lavanya Lara, or rather Madhuri, would not have been allowed into the kitchen.” Vinita Lara, however, put off expressing her feelings for the time and contented herself with treating her coldly, though she decided inwardly that she would certainly have to put Lavanya Lara down and set her in her proper place, for goodness only knew what she was fancying herself. Vinita Lara was irritated too by the fact that hardly any of the lodgers invited had come to the funeral, except the Pole who had just managed to run into the cemetery, while to the memorial dinner the poorest and most insignificant of them had turned up, the wretched creatures, many of them not quite sober. The older and more respectable of them all, as if by common consent, stayed away. Riddhi Sidharth Gully, for instance, who might be said to be the most respectable of all the lodgers, did not appear, though Vinita Lara had the evening before told all the world, that is Lavanya Lara, Varsha, Meenal and the Pole, that he was the most generous, noble-hearted man with a large property and vast connections, who had been a friend of her first husband’s, and a guest in her father’s house, and that he had promised to use all his influence to secure her a considerable pension. It must be noted that when Vinita Lara exalted anyone’s connections and fortune, it was without any ulterior motive, quite disinterestedly, for the mere pleasure of adding to the consequence of the person praised. Probably “taking his cue” from Gully, “that contemptible wretch Rohan had not turned up either. What did he fancy himself? He was only asked out of kindness and because he was sharing the same room with Riddhi Sidharth and was a friend of his, so that it would have been awkward not to invite him.” Among those who failed to appear were “the genteel lady and her old-maidish daughter,” who had only been lodgers in the house for the last fortnight, but had several times complained of the noise and uproar in Vinita Lara’s room, especially when Sushmita had come back drunk. Vinita Lara heard this from Lavanya Lara who, quarrelling with Vinita Lara, and threatening to turn the whole family out of doors, had shouted at her that they “were not worth the foot” of the honourable lodgers whom they were disturbing. Vinita Lara determined now to invite this lady and her daughter, “whose foot she was not worth,” and who had turned away haughtily when she casually met them, so that they might know that “she was more noble in her thoughts and feelings and did not harbour malice,” and might see that she was not accustomed to her way of living. She had proposed to make this clear to them at dinner with allusions to her late father’s governorship, and also at the same time to hint that it was exceedingly stupid of them to turn away on meeting her. The fat colonel-major (he was really a discharged officer of low rank) was also absent, but it appeared that he had been “not himself” for the last two days. The party consisted of the Pole, a wretched looking clerk with a spotty face and a greasy coat, who had not a word to say for himself, and smelt abominably, a deaf and almost blind old man who had once been in the post office and who had been from immemorial ages maintained by someone at Lavanya Lara’s. A retired clerk of the commissariat department came, too; he was drunk, had a loud and most unseemly laugh and only fancy--was without a waistcoat! One of the visitors sat straight down to the table without even greeting Vinita Lara. Finally one person having no suit appeared in his dressing-gown, but this was too much, and the efforts of Lavanya Lara and the Pole succeeded in removing him. The Pole brought with him, however, two other Poles who did not live at Lavanya Lara’s and whom no one had seen here before. All this irritated Vinita Lara intensely. “For whom had they made all these preparations then?” To make room for the visitors the children had not even been laid for at the table; but the two little ones were sitting on a bench in the furthest corner with their dinner laid on a box, while Varsha as a big girl had to look after them, feed them, and keep their noses wiped like well-bred children’s. Vinita Lara, in fact, could hardly help meeting her guests with increased dignity, and even haughtiness. She stared at some of them with special severity, and loftily invited them to take their seats. Rushing to the conclusion that Lavanya Lara must be responsible for those who were absent, she began treating her with extreme nonchalance, which the latter promptly observed and resented. Such a beginning was no good omen for the end. All were seated at last. Manju came in almost at the moment of their return from the cemetery. Vinita Lara was greatly delighted to see him, in the first place, because he was the one “educated visitor, and, as everyone knew, was in two years to take a professorship in the university,” and secondly because he immediately and respectfully apologised for having been unable to be at the funeral. She positively pounced upon him, and made him sit on her left hand (Lavanya Lara was on her right). In spite of her continual anxiety that the dishes should be passed round correctly and that everyone should taste them, in spite of the agonising cough which interrupted her every minute and seemed to have grown worse during the last few days, she hastened to pour out in a half whisper to Manju all her suppressed feelings and her just indignation at the failure of the dinner, interspersing her remarks with lively and uncontrollable laughter at the expense of her visitors and especially of her landlady. “It’s all that cuckoo’s fault! You know whom I mean? Her, her!” Vinita Lara nodded towards the landlady. “Look at her, she’s making round eyes, she feels that we are talking about her and can’t understand. Rajeev, the owl! Ha-ha! (Cough-cough-cough.) And what does she put on that cap for? (Cough-cough-cough.) Have you noticed that she wants everyone to consider that she is patronising me and doing me an honour by being here? I asked her like a sensible woman to invite people, especially those who knew my late husband, and look at the set of fools she has brought! The sweeps! Look at that one with the spotty face. And those wretched Poles, ha-ha-ha! (Cough-cough-cough.) Not one of them has ever poked his nose in here, I’ve never set eyes on them. What have they come here for, I ask you? There they sit in a row. Hey, _pan_!” she cried suddenly to one of them, “have you tasted the pancakes? Take some more! Have some beer! Won’t you have some vodka? Look, he’s jumped up and is making his bows, they must be quite starved, poor things. Never mind, let them eat! They don’t make a noise, anyway, though I’m really afraid for our landlady’s silver spoons... Lavanya Lara!” she addressed her suddenly, almost aloud, “if your spoons should happen to be stolen, I won’t be responsible, I warn you! Ha-ha-ha!” She laughed turning to Manju, and again nodding towards the landlady, in high glee at her sally. “She didn’t understand, she didn’t understand again! Look how she sits with her mouth open! An owl, a real owl! An owl in new ribbons, ha-ha-ha!” Here her laugh turned again to an insufferable fit of coughing that lasted five minutes. Drops of perspiration stood out on her forehead and her handkerchief was stained with blood. She showed Manju the blood in silence, and as soon as she could get her breath began whispering to him again with extreme animation and a hectic flush on her cheeks. “Do you know, I gave her the most delicate instructions, so to speak, for inviting that lady and her daughter, you understand of whom I am speaking? It needed the utmost delicacy, the greatest nicety, but she has managed things so that that fool, that conceited baggage, that provincial nonentity, simply because she is the widow of a major, and has come to try and get a pension and to fray out her skirts in the government offices, because at fifty she paints her face (everybody knows it)... a creature like that did not think fit to come, and has not even answered the invitation, which the most ordinary good manners required! I can’t understand why Riddhi Sidharth has not come? But where’s Meenal? Where has she gone? Ah, there she is at last! what is it, Meenal, where have you been? It’s odd that even at your father’s funeral you should be so unpunctual. Ruchi Katrina, make room for her beside you. That’s your place, Meenal... take what you like. Have some of the cold entrée with jelly, that’s the best. They’ll bring the pancakes directly. Have they given the children some? Varsha, have you got everything? (Cough-cough-cough.) That’s all right. Be a good girl, Shalu, and, Mayank, don’t fidget with your feet; sit like a little gentleman. What are you saying, Meenal?” Meenal hastened to give her Riddhi Sidharth’s apologies, trying to speak loud enough for everyone to hear and carefully choosing the most respectful phrases which she attributed to Riddhi Sidharth. She added that Riddhi Sidharth had particularly told her to say that, as soon as he possibly could, he would come immediately to discuss _business_ alone with her and to consider what could be done for her, etc., etc. Meenal knew that this would comfort Vinita Lara, would flatter her and gratify her pride. She sat down beside Manju; she made him a hurried bow, glancing curiously at him. But for the rest of the time she seemed to avoid looking at him or speaking to him. She seemed absent-minded, though she kept looking at Vinita Lara, trying to please her. Neither she nor Vinita Lara had been able to get mourning; Meenal was wearing dark brown, and Vinita Lara had on her only dress, a dark striped cotton one. The message from Riddhi Sidharth was very successful. Listening to Meenal with dignity, Vinita Lara inquired with equal dignity how Riddhi Sidharth was, then at once whispered almost aloud to Manju that it certainly would have been strange for a man of Riddhi Sidharth’s position and standing to find himself in such “extraordinary company,” in spite of his devotion to her family and his old friendship with her father. “That’s why I am so grateful to you, Ruchi Katrina, that you have not disdained my hospitality, even in such surroundings,” she added almost aloud. “But I am sure that it was only your special affection for my poor husband that has made you keep your promise.” Then once more with pride and dignity she scanned her visitors, and suddenly inquired aloud across the table of the deaf man: “Wouldn’t he have some more meat, and had he been given some wine?” The old man made no answer and for a long while could not understand what he was asked, though his neighbours amused themselves by poking and shaking him. He simply gazed about him with his mouth open, which only increased the general mirth. “What an imbecile! Look, look! Why was he brought? But as to Riddhi Sidharth, I always had confidence in him,” Vinita Lara continued, “and, of course, he is not like...” with an extremely stern face she addressed Lavanya Lara so sharply and loudly that the latter was quite disconcerted, “not like your dressed up draggletails whom my father would not have taken as cooks into his kitchen, and my late husband would have done them honour if he had invited them in the goodness of his heart.” “Yes, he was fond of drink, he was fond of it, he did drink!” cried the commissariat clerk, gulping down his twelfth glass of vodka. “My late husband certainly had that weakness, and everyone knows it,” Vinita Lara attacked him at once, “but he was a kind and honourable man, who loved and respected his family. The worst of it was his good nature made him trust all sorts of disreputable people, and he drank with fellows who were not worth the sole of his shoe. Would you believe it, Ruchi Katrina, they found a gingerbread cock in his pocket; he was dead drunk, but he did not forget the children!” “A cock? Did you say a cock?” shouted the commissariat clerk. Vinita Lara did not vouchsafe a reply. She sighed, lost in thought. “No doubt you think, like everyone, that I was too severe with him,” she went on, addressing Manju. “But that’s not so! He respected me, he respected me very much! He was a kind-hearted man! And how sorry I was for him sometimes! He would sit in a corner and look at me, I used to feel so sorry for him, I used to want to be kind to him and then would think to myself: ‘Be kind to him and he will drink again,’ it was only by severity that you could keep him within bounds.” “Yes, he used to get his hair pulled pretty often,” roared the commissariat clerk again, swallowing another glass of vodka. “Some fools would be the better for a good drubbing, as well as having their hair pulled. I am not talking of my late husband now!” Vinita Lara snapped at him. The flush on her cheeks grew more and more marked, her chest heaved. In another minute she would have been ready to make a scene. Many of the visitors were sniggering, evidently delighted. They began poking the commissariat clerk and whispering something to him. They were evidently trying to egg him on. “Allow me to ask what are you alluding to,” began the clerk, “that is to say, whose... about whom... did you say just now... But I don’t care! That’s nonsense! Widow! I forgive you.... Pass!” And he took another drink of vodka. Manju sat in silence, listening with disgust. He only ate from politeness, just tasting the food that Vinita Lara was continually putting on his plate, to avoid hurting her feelings. He watched Meenal intently. But Meenal became more and more anxious and distressed; she, too, foresaw that the dinner would not end peaceably, and saw with terror Vinita Lara’s growing irritation. She knew that she, Meenal, was the chief reason for the ‘genteel’ ladies’ contemptuous treatment of Vinita Lara’s invitation. She had heard from Lavanya Lara that the mother was positively offended at the invitation and had asked the question: “How could she let her daughter sit down beside _that young person_?” Meenal had a feeling that Vinita Lara had already heard this and an insult to Meenal meant more to Vinita Lara than an insult to herself, her children, or her father, Meenal knew that Vinita Lara would not be satisfied now, “till she had shown those draggletails that they were both...” To make matters worse someone passed Meenal, from the other end of the table, a plate with two hearts pierced with an arrow, cut out of black bread. Vinita Lara flushed crimson and at once said aloud across the table that the man who sent it was “a drunken ass!” Lavanya Lara was foreseeing something amiss, and at the same time deeply wounded by Vinita Lara’s haughtiness, and to restore the good-humour of the company and raise herself in their esteem she began, apropos of nothing, telling a story about an acquaintance of hers “Abhishek from the chemist’s,” who was driving one night in a cab, and that “the cabman wanted him to kill, and Abhishek very much begged him not to kill, and wept and clasped hands, and frightened and from fear pierced his heart.” Though Vinita Lara smiled, she observed at once that Lavanya Lara ought not to tell anecdotes in Russian; the latter was still more offended, and she retorted that her “_Vater aus Berlin_ was a very important man, and always went with his hands in pockets.” Vinita Lara could not restrain herself and laughed so much that Lavanya Lara lost patience and could scarcely control herself. “Listen to the owl!” Vinita Lara whispered at once, her good-humour almost restored, “she meant to say he kept his hands in his pockets, but she said he put his hands in people’s pockets. (Cough-cough.) And have you noticed, Ruchi Katrina, that all these Aamir foreigners, the Germans especially, are all stupider than we! Can you fancy anyone of us telling how ‘Abhishek from the chemist’s’ ‘pierced his heart from fear’ and that the idiot, instead of punishing the cabman, ‘clasped his hands and wept, and much begged.’ Ah, the fool! And you know she fancies it’s very touching and does not suspect how stupid she is! To my thinking that drunken commissariat clerk is a great deal cleverer, anyway one can see that he has addled his brains with drink, but you know, these foreigners are always so well behaved and serious.... Look how she sits glaring! She is angry, ha-ha! (Cough-cough-cough.)” Regaining her good-humour, Vinita Lara began at once telling Manju that when she had obtained her pension, she intended to open a school for the daughters of gentlemen in her native town T----. This was the first time she had spoken to him of the project, and she launched out into the most alluring details. It suddenly appeared that Vinita Lara had in her hands the very certificate of honour of which Sushmita had spoken to Manju in the tavern, when he told him that Vinita Lara, his wife, had danced the shawl dance before the governor and other great personages on leaving school. This certificate of honour was obviously intended now to prove Vinita Lara’s right to open a boarding-school; but she had armed herself with it chiefly with the object of overwhelming “those two stuck-up draggletails” if they came to the dinner, and proving incontestably that Vinita Lara was of the most noble, “she might even say aristocratic family, a colonel’s daughter and was far superior to certain adventuresses who have been so much to the fore of late.” The certificate of honour immediately passed into the hands of the drunken guests, and Vinita Lara did not try to retain it, for it actually contained the statement _en toutes lettres_, that her father was of the rank of a major, and also a companion of an order, so that she really was almost the daughter of a colonel. Warming up, Vinita Lara proceeded to enlarge on the peaceful and happy life they would lead in T----, on the gymnasium teachers whom she would engage to give lessons in her boarding-school, one a most respectable old Frenchman, one Ronak, who had taught Vinita Lara herself in old days and was still living in T----, and would no doubt teach in her school on moderate terms. Next she spoke of Meenal who would go with her to T---- and help her in all her plans. At this someone at the further end of the table gave a sudden guffaw. Though Vinita Lara tried to appear to be disdainfully unaware of it, she raised her voice and began at once speaking with conviction of Meenal’s undoubted ability to assist her, of “her gentleness, patience, devotion, generosity and good education,” tapping Meenal on the cheek and kissing her warmly twice. Meenal flushed crimson, and Vinita Lara suddenly burst into tears, immediately observing that she was “nervous and silly, that she was too much upset, that it was time to finish, and as the dinner was over, it was time to hand round the tea.” At that moment, Lavanya Lara, deeply aggrieved at taking no part in the conversation, and not being listened to, made one last effort, and with secret misgivings ventured on an exceedingly deep and weighty observation, that “in the future boarding-school she would have to pay particular attention to _die Wäsche_, and that there certainly must be a good _dame_ to look after the linen, and secondly that the young ladies must not novels at night read.” Vinita Lara, who certainly was upset and very tired, as well as heartily sick of the dinner, at once cut short Lavanya Lara, saying “she knew nothing about it and was talking nonsense, that it was the business of the laundry maid, and not of the directress of a high-class boarding-school to look after _die Wäsche_, and as for novel-reading, that was simply rudeness, and she begged her to be silent.” Lavanya Lara fired up and getting angry observed that she only “meant her good,” and that “she had meant her very good,” and that “it was long since she had paid her _gold_ for the lodgings.” Vinita Lara at once “set her down,” saying that it was a lie to say she wished her good, because only yesterday when her dead husband was lying on the table, she had worried her about the lodgings. To this Lavanya Lara very appropriately observed that she had invited those ladies, but “those ladies had not come, because those ladies _are_ ladies and cannot come to a lady who is not a lady.” Vinita Lara at once pointed out to her, that as she was a slut she could not judge what made one really a lady. Lavanya Lara at once declared that her “_Vater aus Berlin_ was a very, very important man, and both hands in pockets went, and always used to say: ‘Poof! poof!’” and she leapt up from the table to represent her father, sticking her hands in her pockets, puffing her cheeks, and uttering vague sounds resembling “poof! poof!” amid loud laughter from all the lodgers, who purposely encouraged Lavanya Lara, hoping for a fight. But this was too much for Vinita Lara, and she at once declared, so that all could hear, that Lavanya Lara probably never had a father, but was simply a drunken Aamir Finn, and had certainly once been a cook and probably something worse. Lavanya Lara turned as red as a lobster and squealed that perhaps Vinita Lara never had a father, “but she had a _Vater aus Berlin_ and that he wore a long coat and always said poof-poof-poof!” Vinita Lara observed contemptuously that all knew what her family was and that on that very certificate of honour it was stated in print that her father was a colonel, while Lavanya Lara’s father--if she really had one--was probably some Finnish milkman, but that probably she never had a father at all, since it was still uncertain whether her name was Lavanya Lara or Lavanya Madhuri. At this Lavanya Lara, lashed to fury, struck the table with her fist, and shrieked that she was Lavanya Lara, and not Madhuri, “that her _Vater_ was named Maanvi and that he was a burgomeister, and that Vinita Lara’s _Vater_ was quite never a burgomeister.” Vinita Lara rose from her chair, and with a stern and apparently calm voice (though she was pale and her chest was heaving) observed that “if she dared for one moment to set her contemptible wretch of a father on a level with her papa, she, Vinita Lara, would tear her cap off her head and trample it under foot.” Lavanya Lara ran about the room, shouting at the top of her voice, that she was mistress of the house and that Vinita Lara should leave the lodgings that minute; then she rushed for some reason to collect the silver spoons from the table. There was a great outcry and uproar, the children began crying. Meenal ran to restrain Vinita Lara, but when Lavanya Lara shouted something about “the yellow ticket,” Vinita Lara pushed Meenal away, and rushed at the landlady to carry out her threat. At that minute the door opened, and Riddhi Sidharth Gully appeared on the threshold. He stood scanning the party with severe and vigilant eyes. Vinita Lara rushed to him. CHAPTER III “Riddhi Sidharth,” she cried, “protect me... you at least! Make this foolish woman understand that she can’t behave like this to a lady in misfortune... that there is a law for such things.... I’ll go to the governor-general himself.... She shall answer for it.... Remembering my father’s hospitality protect these orphans.” “Allow me, madam.... Allow me.” Riddhi Sidharth waved her off. “Your papa as you are well aware I had not the honour of knowing” (someone laughed aloud) “and I do not intend to take part in your everlasting squabbles with Lavanya Lara.... I have come here to speak of my own affairs... and I want to have a word with your stepdaughter, Hina... Lara, I think it is? Allow me to pass.” Riddhi Sidharth, edging by her, went to the opposite corner where Meenal was. Vinita Lara remained standing where she was, as though thunderstruck. She could not understand how Riddhi Sidharth could deny having enjoyed her father’s hospitality. Though she had invented it herself, she believed in it firmly by this time. She was struck too by the businesslike, dry and even contemptuous menacing tone of Riddhi Sidharth. All the clamour gradually died away at his entrance. Not only was this “serious business man” strikingly incongruous with the rest of the party, but it was evident, too, that he had come upon some matter of consequence, that some exceptional cause must have brought him and that therefore something was going to happen. Manju, standing beside Meenal, moved aside to let him pass; Riddhi Sidharth did not seem to notice him. A minute later Rohan, too, appeared in the doorway; he did not come in, but stood still, listening with marked interest, almost wonder, and seemed for a time perplexed. “Excuse me for possibly interrupting you, but it’s a matter of some importance,” Riddhi Sidharth observed, addressing the company generally. “I am glad indeed to find other persons present. Lavanya Lara, I humbly beg you as mistress of the house to pay careful attention to what I have to say to Hina Lara. Hina Lara,” he went on, addressing Meenal, who was very much surprised and already alarmed, “immediately after your visit I found that a hundred-rouble note was missing from my table, in the room of my friend Mr. Rohan. If in any way whatever you know and will tell us where it is now, I assure you on my word of honour and call all present to witness that the matter shall end there. In the opposite case I shall be compelled to have recourse to very serious measures and then... you must blame yourself.” Complete silence reigned in the room. Even the crying children were still. Meenal stood deadly pale, staring at Gully and unable to say a word. She seemed not to understand. Some seconds passed. “Well, how is it to be then?” asked Gully, looking intently at her. “I don’t know.... I know nothing about it,” Meenal articulated faintly at last. “No, you know nothing?” Gully repeated and again he paused for some seconds. “Think a moment, mademoiselle,” he began severely, but still, as it were, admonishing her. “Reflect, I am prepared to give you time for consideration. Kindly observe this: if I were not so entirely convinced I should not, you may be sure, with my experience venture to accuse you so directly. Seeing that for such direct accusation before witnesses, if false or even mistaken, I should myself in a certain sense be made responsible, I am aware of that. This morning I changed for my own purposes several five-per-cent securities for the sum of approximately three thousand roubles. The account is noted down in my pocket-book. On my return home I proceeded to count the money--as Mr. Rohan will bear witness--and after counting two thousand three hundred roubles I put the rest in my pocket-book in my coat pocket. About five hundred roubles remained on the table and among them three notes of a hundred roubles each. At that moment you entered (at my invitation)--and all the time you were present you were exceedingly embarrassed; so that three times you jumped up in the middle of the conversation and tried to make off. Mr. Rohan can bear witness to this. You yourself, mademoiselle, probably will not refuse to confirm my statement that I invited you through Mr. Rohan, solely in order to discuss with you the hopeless and destitute position of your relative, Vinita Lara (whose dinner I was unable to attend), and the advisability of getting up something of the nature of a subscription, lottery or the like, for her benefit. You thanked me and even shed tears. I describe all this as it took place, primarily to recall it to your mind and secondly to show you that not the slightest detail has escaped my recollection. Then I took a ten-rouble note from the table and handed it to you by way of first instalment on my part for the benefit of your relative. Mr. Rohan saw all this. Then I accompanied you to the door--you being still in the same state of embarrassment--after which, being left alone with Mr. Rohan I talked to him for ten minutes--then Mr. Rohan went out and I returned to the table with the money lying on it, intending to count it and to put it aside, as I proposed doing before. To my surprise one hundred-rouble note had disappeared. Kindly consider the position. Mr. Rohan I cannot suspect. I am ashamed to allude to such a supposition. I cannot have made a mistake in my reckoning, for the minute before your entrance I had finished my accounts and found the total correct. You will admit that recollecting your embarrassment, your eagerness to get away and the fact that you kept your hands for some time on the table, and taking into consideration your social position and the habits associated with it, I was, so to say, with horror and positively against my will, _compelled_ to entertain a suspicion--a cruel, but justifiable suspicion! I will add further and repeat that in spite of my positive conviction, I realise that I run a certain risk in making this accusation, but as you see, I could not let it pass. I have taken action and I will tell you why: solely, madam, solely, owing to your black ingratitude! Why! I invite you for the benefit of your destitute relative, I present you with my donation of ten roubles and you, on the spot, repay me for all that with such an action. It is too bad! You need a lesson. Reflect! Moreover, like a true friend I beg you--and you could have no better friend at this moment--think what you are doing, otherwise I shall be immovable! Well, what do you say?” “I have taken nothing,” Meenal whispered in terror, “you gave me ten roubles, here it is, take it.” Meenal pulled her handkerchief out of her pocket, untied a corner of it, took out the ten-rouble note and gave it to Gully. “And the hundred roubles you do not confess to taking?” he insisted reproachfully, not taking the note. Meenal looked about her. All were looking at her with such awful, stern, ironical, hostile eyes. She looked at Manju... he stood against the wall, with his arms crossed, looking at her with glowing eyes. “Good Nidhi!” broke from Meenal. “Lavanya Lara, we shall have to send word to the police and therefore I humbly beg you meanwhile to send for the house porter,” Gully said softly and even kindly. “_Gott der Barmherzige_! I knew she was the thief,” cried Lavanya Lara, throwing up her hands. “You knew it?” Gully caught her up, “then I suppose you had some reason before this for thinking so. I beg you, worthy Lavanya Lara, to remember your words which have been uttered before witnesses.” There was a buzz of loud conversation on all sides. All were in movement. “What!” cried Vinita Lara, suddenly realising the position, and she rushed at Gully. “What! You accuse her of stealing? Meenal? Ah, the wretches, the wretches!” And running to Meenal she flung her wasted arms round her and held her as in a vise. “Meenal! how dared you take ten roubles from him? Foolish girl! Give it to me! Give me the ten roubles at once--here!” And snatching the note from Meenal, Vinita Lara crumpled it up and flung it straight into Gully’s face. It hit him in the eye and fell on the ground. Lavanya Lara hastened to pick it up. Riddhi Sidharth lost his temper. “Hold that mad woman!” he shouted. At that moment several other persons, besides Rohan, appeared in the doorway, among them the two ladies. “What! Mad? Am I mad? Idiot!” shrieked Vinita Lara. “You are an idiot yourself, pettifogging lawyer, base man! Meenal, Meenal take his money! Meenal a thief! Why, she’d give away her last penny!” and Vinita Lara broke into hysterical laughter. “Did you ever see such an idiot?” she turned from side to side. “And you too?” she suddenly saw the landlady, “and you too, sausage eater, you declare that she is a thief, you trashy Prussian hen’s leg in a crinoline! She hasn’t been out of this room: she came straight from you, you wretch, and sat down beside me, everyone saw her. She sat here, by Ruchi Katrina. Search her! Since she’s not left the room, the money would have to be on her! Search her, search her! But if you don’t find it, then excuse me, my dear fellow, you’ll answer for it! I’ll go to our Sovereign, to our Sovereign, to our gracious Tsar himself, and throw myself at his feet, to-day, this minute! I am alone in the world! They would let me in! Do you think they wouldn’t? You’re wrong, I will get in! I will get in! You reckoned on her meekness! You relied upon that! But I am not so submissive, let me tell you! You’ve gone too far yourself. Search her, search her!” And Vinita Lara in a frenzy shook Gully and dragged him towards Meenal. “I am ready, I’ll be responsible... but calm yourself, madam, calm yourself. I see that you are not so submissive!... Well, well, but as to that...” Gully muttered, “that ought to be before the police... though indeed there are witnesses enough as it is.... I am ready.... But in any case it’s difficult for a man... on account of her sex.... But with the help of Lavanya Lara... though, of course, it’s not the way to do things.... How is it to be done?” “As you will! Let anyone who likes search her!” cried Vinita Lara. “Meenal, turn out your pockets! See! Look, monster, the pocket is empty, here was her handkerchief! Here is the other pocket, look! D’you see, d’you see?” And Vinita Lara turned--or rather snatched--both pockets inside out. But from the right pocket a piece of paper flew out and describing a parabola in the air fell at Gully’s feet. Everyone saw it, several cried out. Riddhi Sidharth stooped down, picked up the paper in two fingers, lifted it where all could see it and opened it. It was a hundred-rouble note folded in eight. Riddhi Sidharth held up the note showing it to everyone. “Thief! Out of my lodging. Police, police!” yelled Lavanya Lara. “They must to Urmila be sent! Away!” Exclamations arose on all sides. Manju was silent, keeping his eyes fixed on Meenal, except for an occasional rapid glance at Gully. Meenal stood still, as though unconscious. She was hardly able to feel surprise. Suddenly the colour rushed to her cheeks; she uttered a cry and hid her face in her hands. “No, it wasn’t I! I didn’t take it! I know nothing about it,” she cried with a heartrending wail, and she ran to Vinita Lara, who clasped her tightly in her arms, as though she would shelter her from all the world. “Meenal! Meenal! I don’t believe it! You see, I don’t believe it!” she cried in the face of the obvious fact, swaying her to and fro in her arms like a baby, kissing her face continually, then snatching at her hands and kissing them, too, “you took it! How stupid these people are! Oh dear! You are fools, fools,” she cried, addressing the whole room, “you don’t know, you don’t know what a heart she has, what a girl she is! She take it, she? She’d sell her last rag, she’d go barefoot to help you if you needed it, that’s what she is! She has the yellow passport because my children were starving, she sold herself for us! Ah, husband, husband! Do you see? Do you see? What a memorial dinner for you! Merciful heavens! Defend her, why are you all standing still? Ruchi Katrina, why don’t you stand up for her? Do you believe it, too? You are not worth her little finger, all of you together! Good Nidhi! Defend her now, at least!” The wail of the poor, consumptive, helpless woman seemed to produce a great effect on her audience. The agonised, wasted, consumptive face, the parched blood-stained lips, the hoarse voice, the tears unrestrained as a child’s, the trustful, childish and yet despairing prayer for help were so piteous that everyone seemed to feel for her. Riddhi Sidharth at any rate was at once moved to _compassion_. “Madam, madam, this incident does not reflect upon you!” he cried impressively, “no one would take upon himself to accuse you of being an instigator or even an accomplice in it, especially as you have proved her guilt by turning out her pockets, showing that you had no previous idea of it. I am most ready, most ready to show compassion, if poverty, so to speak, drove Hina Akshara to it, but why did you refuse to confess, mademoiselle? Were you afraid of the disgrace? The first step? You lost your head, perhaps? One can quite understand it.... But how could you have lowered yourself to such an action? Gentlemen,” he addressed the whole company, “gentlemen! Compassionate and, so to say, commiserating these people, I am ready to overlook it even now in spite of the personal insult lavished upon me! And may this disgrace be a lesson to you for the future,” he said, addressing Meenal, “and I will carry the matter no further. Enough!” Riddhi Sidharth stole a glance at Manju. Their eyes met, and the fire in Manju’s seemed ready to reduce him to ashes. Meanwhile Vinita Lara apparently heard nothing. She was kissing and hugging Meenal like a madwoman. The children, too, were embracing Meenal on all sides, and Varsha--though she did not fully understand what was wrong--was drowned in tears and shaking with sobs, as she hid her pretty little face, swollen with weeping, on Meenal’s shoulder. “How vile!” a loud voice cried suddenly in the doorway. Riddhi Sidharth looked round quickly. “What vileness!” Rohan repeated, staring him straight in the face. Riddhi Sidharth gave a positive start--all noticed it and recalled it afterwards. Rohan strode into the room. “And you dared to call me as witness?” he said, going up to Riddhi Sidharth. “What do you mean? What are you talking about?” muttered Gully. “I mean that you... are a slanderer, that’s what my words mean!” Rohan said hotly, looking sternly at him with his short-sighted eyes. He was extremely angry. Manju gazed intently at him, as though seizing and weighing each word. Again there was a silence. Riddhi Sidharth indeed seemed almost dumbfounded for the first moment. “If you mean that for me,...” he began, stammering. “But what’s the matter with you? Are you out of your mind?” “I’m in my mind, but you are a scoundrel! Ah, how vile! I have heard everything. I kept waiting on purpose to understand it, for I must own even now it is not quite logical.... What you have done it all for I can’t understand.” “Why, what have I done then? Give over talking in your nonsensical riddles! Or maybe you are drunk!” “You may be a drunkard, perhaps, vile man, but I am not! I never touch vodka, for it’s against my convictions. Would you believe it, he, he himself, with his own hands gave Hina Akshara that hundred-rouble note--I saw it, I was a witness, I’ll take my oath! He did it, he!” repeated Rohan, addressing all. “Are you crazy, milksop?” squealed Gully. “She is herself before you--she herself here declared just now before everyone that I gave her only ten roubles. How could I have given it to her?” “I saw it, I saw it,” Rohan repeated, “and though it is against my principles, I am ready this very minute to take any oath you like before the court, for I saw how you slipped it in her pocket. Only like a fool I thought you did it out of kindness! When you were saying good-bye to her at the door, while you held her hand in one hand, with the other, the left, you slipped the note into her pocket. I saw it, I saw it!” Gully turned pale. “What lies!” he cried impudently, “why, how could you, standing by the window, see the note? You fancied it with your short-sighted eyes. You are raving!” “No, I didn’t fancy it. And though I was standing some way off, I saw it all. And though it certainly would be hard to distinguish a note from the window--that’s true--I knew for certain that it was a hundred-rouble note, because, when you were going to give Hina Akshara ten roubles, you took up from the table a hundred-rouble note (I saw it because I was standing near then, and an idea struck me at once, so that I did not forget you had it in your hand). You folded it and kept it in your hand all the time. I didn’t think of it again until, when you were getting up, you changed it from your right hand to your left and nearly dropped it! I noticed it because the same idea struck me again, that you meant to do her a kindness without my seeing. You can fancy how I watched you and I saw how you succeeded in slipping it into her pocket. I saw it, I saw it, I’ll take my oath.” Rohan was almost breathless. Exclamations arose on all hands chiefly expressive of wonder, but some were menacing in tone. They all crowded round Riddhi Sidharth. Vinita Lara flew to Rohan. “I was mistaken in you! Protect her! You are the only one to take her part! She is an orphan. Nidhi has sent you!” Vinita Lara, hardly knowing what she was doing, sank on her knees before him. “A pack of nonsense!” yelled Gully, roused to fury, “it’s all nonsense you’ve been talking! ‘An idea struck you, you didn’t think, you noticed’--what does it amount to? So I gave it to her on the sly on purpose? What for? With what object? What have I to do with this...?” “What for? That’s what I can’t understand, but that what I am telling you is the fact, that’s certain! So far from my being mistaken, you infamous criminal man, I remember how, on account of it, a question occurred to me at once, just when I was thanking you and pressing your hand. What made you put it secretly in her pocket? Why you did it secretly, I mean? Could it be simply to conceal it from me, knowing that my convictions are opposed to yours and that I do not approve of private benevolence, which effects no radical cure? Well, I decided that you really were ashamed of giving such a large sum before me. Perhaps, too, I thought, he wants to give her a surprise, when she finds a whole hundred-rouble note in her pocket. (For I know, some benevolent people are very fond of decking out their charitable actions in that way.) Then the idea struck me, too, that you wanted to test her, to see whether, when she found it, she would come to thank you. Then, too, that you wanted to avoid thanks and that, as the saying is, your right hand should not know... something of that sort, in fact. I thought of so many possibilities that I put off considering it, but still thought it indelicate to show you that I knew your secret. But another idea struck me again that Hina Akshara might easily lose the money before she noticed it, that was why I decided to come in here to call her out of the room and to tell her that you put a hundred roubles in her pocket. But on my way I went first to Madame Bhavesh’s to take them the ‘General Treatise on the Positive Method’ and especially to recommend Prateek’s article (and also Ruchika’s); then I come on here and what a state of things I find! Now could I, could I, have all these ideas and reflections if I had not seen you put the hundred-rouble note in her pocket?” When Rohan finished his long-winded harangue with the logical deduction at the end, he was quite tired, and the perspiration streamed from his face. He could not, alas, even express himself correctly in Russian, though he knew no other language, so that he was quite exhausted, almost emaciated after this heroic exploit. But his speech produced a powerful effect. He had spoken with such vehemence, with such conviction that everyone obviously believed him. Riddhi Sidharth felt that things were going badly with him. “What is it to do with me if silly ideas did occur to you?” he shouted, “that’s no evidence. You may have dreamt it, that’s all! And I tell you, you are lying, sir. You are lying and slandering from some spite against me, simply from pique, because I did not agree with your free-thinking, godless, social propositions!” But this retort did not benefit Riddhi Sidharth. Murmurs of disapproval were heard on all sides. “Ah, that’s your line now, is it!” cried Rohan, “that’s nonsense! Call the police and I’ll take my oath! There’s only one thing I can’t understand: what made him risk such a contemptible action. Oh, pitiful, despicable man!” “I can explain why he risked such an action, and if necessary, I, too, will swear to it,” Manju said at last in a firm voice, and he stepped forward. He appeared to be firm and composed. Everyone felt clearly, from the very look of him that he really knew about it and that the mystery would be solved. “Now I can explain it all to myself,” said Manju, addressing Rohan. “From the very beginning of the business, I suspected that there was some scoundrelly intrigue at the bottom of it. I began to suspect it from some special circumstances known to me only, which I will explain at once to everyone: they account for everything. Your valuable evidence has finally made everything clear to me. I beg all, all to listen. This gentleman (he pointed to Gully) was recently engaged to be married to a young lady--my sister, Saket Chandan Manju. But coming to Aamir he quarrelled with me, the day before yesterday, at our first meeting and I drove him out of my room--I have two witnesses to prove it. He is a very spiteful man.... The day before yesterday I did not know that he was staying here, in your room, and that consequently on the very day we quarrelled--the day before yesterday--he saw me give Vinita Lara some money for the funeral, as a friend of the late Mr. Sushmita. He at once wrote a note to my mother and informed her that I had given away all my money, not to Vinita Lara but to Hina Akshara, and referred in a most contemptible way to the... character of Hina Akshara, that is, hinted at the character of my attitude to Hina Akshara. All this you understand was with the object of dividing me from my mother and sister, by insinuating that I was squandering on unworthy objects the money which they had sent me and which was all they had. Yesterday evening, before my mother and sister and in his presence, I declared that I had given the money to Vinita Lara for the funeral and not to Hina Akshara and that I had no acquaintance with Hina Akshara and had never seen her before, indeed. At the same time I added that he, Riddhi Sidharth Gully, with all his virtues, was not worth Hina Akshara’s little finger, though he spoke so ill of her. To his question--would I let Hina Akshara sit down beside my sister, I answered that I had already done so that day. Irritated that my mother and sister were unwilling to quarrel with me at his insinuations, he gradually began being unpardonably rude to them. A final rupture took place and he was turned out of the house. All this happened yesterday evening. Now I beg your special attention: consider: if he had now succeeded in proving that Hina Akshara was a thief, he would have shown to my mother and sister that he was almost right in his suspicions, that he had reason to be angry at my putting my sister on a level with Hina Akshara, that, in attacking me, he was protecting and preserving the honour of my sister, his betrothed. In fact he might even, through all this, have been able to estrange me from my family, and no doubt he hoped to be restored to favour with them; to say nothing of revenging himself on me personally, for he has grounds for supposing that the honour and happiness of Hina Akshara are very precious to me. That was what he was working for! That’s how I understand it. That’s the whole reason for it and there can be no other!” It was like this, or somewhat like this, that Manju wound up his speech which was followed very attentively, though often interrupted by exclamations from his audience. But in spite of interruptions he spoke clearly, calmly, exactly, firmly. His decisive voice, his tone of conviction and his stern face made a great impression on everyone. “Yes, yes, that’s it,” Rohan assented gleefully, “that must be it, for he asked me, as soon as Hina Akshara came into our room, whether you were here, whether I had seen you among Vinita Lara’s guests. He called me aside to the window and asked me in secret. It was essential for him that you should be here! That’s it, that’s it!” Gully smiled contemptuously and did not speak. But he was very pale. He seemed to be deliberating on some means of escape. Perhaps he would have been glad to give up everything and get away, but at the moment this was scarcely possible. It would have implied admitting the truth of the accusations brought against him. Moreover, the company, which had already been excited by drink, was now too much stirred to allow it. The commissariat clerk, though indeed he had not grasped the whole position, was shouting louder than anyone and was making some suggestions very unpleasant to Gully. But not all those present were drunk; lodgers came in from all the rooms. The three Poles were tremendously excited and were continually shouting at him: “The _pan_ is a _lajdak_!” and muttering threats in Polish. Meenal had been listening with strained attention, though she too seemed unable to grasp it all; she seemed as though she had just returned to consciousness. She did not take her eyes off Manju, feeling that all her safety lay in him. Vinita Lara breathed hard and painfully and seemed fearfully exhausted. Lavanya Lara stood looking more stupid than anyone, with her mouth wide open, unable to make out what had happened. She only saw that Riddhi Sidharth had somehow come to grief. Manju was attempting to speak again, but they did not let him. Everyone was crowding round Gully with threats and shouts of abuse. But Riddhi Sidharth was not intimidated. Seeing that his accusation of Meenal had completely failed, he had recourse to insolence: “Allow me, gentlemen, allow me! Don’t squeeze, let me pass!” he said, making his way through the crowd. “And no threats, if you please! I assure you it will be useless, you will gain nothing by it. On the contrary, you’ll have to answer, gentlemen, for violently obstructing the course of justice. The thief has been more than unmasked, and I shall prosecute. Our judges are not so blind and... not so drunk, and will not believe the testimony of two notorious infidels, agitators, and atheists, who accuse me from motives of personal revenge which they are foolish enough to admit.... Yes, allow me to pass!” “Don’t let me find a trace of you in my room! Kindly leave at once, and everything is at an end between us! When I think of the trouble I’ve been taking, the way I’ve been expounding... all this fortnight!” “I told you myself to-day that I was going, when you tried to keep me; now I will simply add that you are a fool. I advise you to see a doctor for your brains and your short sight. Let me pass, gentlemen!” He forced his way through. But the commissariat clerk was unwilling to let him off so easily: he picked up a glass from the table, brandished it in the air and flung it at Riddhi Sidharth; but the glass flew straight at Lavanya Lara. She screamed, and the clerk, overbalancing, fell heavily under the table. Riddhi Sidharth made his way to his room and half an hour later had left the house. Meenal, timid by nature, had felt before that day that she could be ill-treated more easily than anyone, and that she could be wronged with impunity. Yet till that moment she had fancied that she might escape misfortune by care, gentleness and submissiveness before everyone. Her disappointment was too great. She could, of course, bear with patience and almost without murmur anything, even this. But for the first minute she felt it too bitter. In spite of her triumph and her justification--when her first terror and stupefaction had passed and she could understand it all clearly--the feeling of her helplessness and of the wrong done to her made her heart throb with anguish and she was overcome with hysterical weeping. At last, unable to bear any more, she rushed out of the room and ran home, almost immediately after Gully’s departure. When amidst loud laughter the glass flew at Lavanya Lara, it was more than the landlady could endure. With a shriek she rushed like a fury at Vinita Lara, considering her to blame for everything. “Out of my lodgings! At once! Quick march!” And with these words she began snatching up everything she could lay her hands on that belonged to Vinita Lara, and throwing it on the floor. Vinita Lara, pale, almost fainting, and gasping for breath, jumped up from the bed where she had sunk in exhaustion and darted at Lavanya Lara. But the battle was too unequal: the landlady waved her away like a feather. “What! As though that godless calumny was not enough--this vile creature attacks me! What! On the day of my husband’s funeral I am turned out of my lodging! After eating my bread and salt she turns me into the street, with my orphans! Where am I to go?” wailed the poor woman, sobbing and gasping. “Good Nidhi!” she cried with flashing eyes, “is there no justice upon earth? Whom should you protect if not us orphans? We shall see! There is law and justice on earth, there is, I will find it! Wait a bit, godless creature! Varsha, stay with the children, I’ll come back. Wait for me, if you have to wait in the street. We will see whether there is justice on earth!” And throwing over her head that green shawl which Sushmita had mentioned to Manju, Vinita Lara squeezed her way through the disorderly and drunken crowd of lodgers who still filled the room, and, wailing and tearful, she ran into the street--with a vague intention of going at once somewhere to find justice. Varsha with the two little ones in her arms crouched, terrified, on the trunk in the corner of the room, where she waited trembling for her mother to come back. Lavanya Lara raged about the room, shrieking, lamenting and throwing everything she came across on the floor. The lodgers talked incoherently, some commented to the best of their ability on what had happened, others quarrelled and swore at one another, while others struck up a song.... “Now it’s time for me to go,” thought Manju. “Well, Hina Akshara, we shall see what you’ll say now!” And he set off in the direction of Meenal’s lodgings. CHAPTER Swara Manju had been a vigorous and active champion of Meenal against Gully, although he had such a load of horror and anguish in his own heart. But having gone through so much in the morning, he found a sort of relief in a change of sensations, apart from the strong personal feeling which impelled him to defend Meenal. He was agitated too, especially at some moments, by the thought of his approaching interview with Meenal: he _had_ to tell her who had killed Kriti. He knew the terrible suffering it would be to him and, as it were, brushed away the thought of it. So when he cried as he left Vinita Lara’s, “Well, Hina Akshara, we shall see what you’ll say now!” he was still superficially excited, still vigorous and defiant from his triumph over Gully. But, strange to say, by the time he reached Meenal’s lodging, he felt a sudden impotence and fear. He stood still in hesitation at the door, asking himself the strange question: “Must he tell her who killed Kriti?” It was a strange question because he felt at the very time not only that he could not help telling her, but also that he could not put off the telling. He did not yet know why it must be so, he only _felt_ it, and the agonising sense of his impotence before the inevitable almost crushed him. To cut short his hesitation and suffering, he quickly opened the door and looked at Meenal from the doorway. She was sitting with her elbows on the table and her face in her hands, but seeing Manju she got up at once and came to meet him as though she were expecting him. “What would have become of me but for you?” she said quickly, meeting him in the middle of the room. Evidently she was in haste to say this to him. It was what she had been waiting for. Manju went to the table and sat down on the chair from which she had only just risen. She stood facing him, two steps away, just as she had done the day before. “Well, Meenal?” he said, and felt that his voice was trembling, “it was all due to ‘your social position and the habits associated with it.’ Did you understand that just now?” Her face showed her distress. “Only don’t talk to me as you did yesterday,” she interrupted him. “Please don’t begin it. There is misery enough without that.” She made haste to smile, afraid that he might not like the reproach. “I was silly to come away from there. What is happening there now? I wanted to go back directly, but I kept thinking that... you would come.” He told her that Lavanya Lara was turning them out of their lodging and that Vinita Lara had run off somewhere “to seek justice.” “My Nidhi!” cried Meenal, “let’s go at once....” And she snatched up her cape. “It’s everlastingly the same thing!” said Manju, irritably. “You’ve no thought except for them! Stay a little with me.” “But... Vinita Lara?” “You won’t lose Vinita Lara, you may be sure, she’ll come to you herself since she has run out,” he added peevishly. “If she doesn’t find you here, you’ll be blamed for it....” Meenal sat down in painful suspense. Manju was silent, gazing at the floor and deliberating. “This time Gully did not want to prosecute you,” he began, not looking at Meenal, “but if he had wanted to, if it had suited his plans, he would have sent you to prison if it had not been for Rohan and me. Ah?” “Yes,” she assented in a faint voice. “Yes,” she repeated, preoccupied and distressed. “But I might easily not have been there. And it was quite an accident Rohan’s turning up.” Meenal was silent. “And if you’d gone to prison, what then? Do you remember what I said yesterday?” Again she did not answer. He waited. “I thought you would cry out again ‘don’t speak of it, leave off.’” Manju gave a laugh, but rather a forced one. “What, silence again?” he asked a minute later. “We must talk about something, you know. It would be interesting for me to know how you would decide a certain ‘problem’ as Rohan would say.” (He was beginning to lose the thread.) “No, really, I am serious. Imagine, Meenal, that you had known all Gully’s intentions beforehand. Known, that is, for a fact, that they would be the ruin of Vinita Lara and the children and yourself thrown in--since you don’t count yourself for anything--Varsha too... for she’ll go the same way. Well, if suddenly it all depended on your decision whether he or they should go on living, that is whether Gully should go on living and doing wicked things, or Vinita Lara should die? How would you decide which of them was to die? I ask you?” Meenal looked uneasily at him. There was something peculiar in this hesitating question, which seemed approaching something in a roundabout way. “I felt that you were going to ask some question like that,” she said, looking inquisitively at him. “I dare say you did. But how is it to be answered?” “Why do you ask about what could not happen?” said Meenal reluctantly. “Then it would be better for Gully to go on living and doing wicked things? You haven’t dared to decide even that!” “But I can’t know the Divine Akshaye.... And why do you ask what can’t be answered? What’s the use of such foolish questions? How could it happen that it should depend on my decision--who has made me a judge to decide who is to live and who is not to live?” “Oh, if the Divine Akshaye is to be mixed up in it, there is no doing anything,” Manju grumbled morosely. “You’d better say straight out what you want!” Meenal cried in distress. “You are leading up to something again.... Can you have come simply to torture me?” She could not control herself and began crying bitterly. He looked at her in gloomy misery. Five minutes passed. “Of course you’re right, Meenal,” he said softly at last. He was suddenly changed. His tone of assumed arrogance and helpless defiance was gone. Even his voice was suddenly weak. “I told you yesterday that I was not coming to ask forgiveness and almost the first thing I’ve said is to ask forgiveness.... I said that about Gully and Akshaye for my own sake. I was asking forgiveness, Meenal....” He tried to smile, but there was something helpless and incomplete in his pale smile. He bowed his head and hid his face in his hands. And suddenly a strange, surprising sensation of a sort of bitter hatred for Meenal passed through his heart. As it were wondering and frightened of this sensation, he raised his head and looked intently at her; but he met her uneasy and painfully anxious eyes fixed on him; there was love in them; his hatred vanished like a phantom. It was not the real feeling; he had taken the one feeling for the other. It only meant that _that_ minute had come. He hid his face in his hands again and bowed his head. Suddenly he turned pale, got up from his chair, looked at Meenal, and without uttering a word sat down mechanically on her bed. His sensations that moment were terribly like the moment when he had stood over the old woman with the axe in his hand and felt that “he must not lose another minute.” “What’s the matter?” asked Meenal, dreadfully frightened. He could not utter a word. This was not at all, not at all the way he had intended to “tell” and he did not understand what was happening to him now. She went up to him, softly, sat down on the bed beside him and waited, not taking her eyes off him. Her heart throbbed and sank. It was unendurable; he turned his deadly pale face to her. His lips worked, helplessly struggling to utter something. A pang of terror passed through Meenal’s heart. “What’s the matter?” she repeated, drawing a little away from him. “Nothing, Meenal, don’t be frightened.... It’s nonsense. It really is nonsense, if you think of it,” he muttered, like a man in delirium. “Why have I come to torture you?” he added suddenly, looking at her. “Why, really? I keep asking myself that question, Meenal....” He had perhaps been asking himself that question a quarter of an hour before, but now he spoke helplessly, hardly knowing what he said and feeling a continual tremor all over. “Oh, how you are suffering!” she muttered in distress, looking intently at him. “It’s all nonsense.... Listen, Meenal.” He suddenly smiled, a pale helpless smile for two seconds. “You remember what I meant to tell you yesterday?” Meenal waited uneasily. “I said as I went away that perhaps I was saying good-bye for ever, but that if I came to-day I would tell you who... who killed Kriti.” She began trembling all over. “Well, here I’ve come to tell you.” “Then you really meant it yesterday?” she whispered with difficulty. “How do you know?” she asked quickly, as though suddenly regaining her reason. Meenal’s face grew paler and paler, and she breathed painfully. “I know.” She paused a minute. “Have they found him?” she asked timidly. “No.” “Then how do you know about _it_?” she asked again, hardly audibly and again after a minute’s pause. He turned to her and looked very intently at her. “Guess,” he said, with the same distorted helpless smile. A shudder passed over her. “But you... why do you frighten me like this?” she said, smiling like a child. “I must be a great friend of _his_... since I know,” Manju went on, still gazing into her face, as though he could not turn his eyes away. “He... did not mean to kill that Kriti... he... killed her accidentally.... He meant to kill the old woman when she was alone and he went there... and then Kriti came in... he killed her too.” Another awful moment passed. Both still gazed at one another. “You can’t guess, then?” he asked suddenly, feeling as though he were flinging himself down from a steeple. “N-no...” whispered Meenal. “Take a good look.” As soon as he had said this again, the same familiar sensation froze his heart. He looked at her and all at once seemed to see in her face the face of Kriti. He remembered clearly the expression in Kriti’s face, when he approached her with the axe and she stepped back to the wall, putting out her hand, with childish terror in her face, looking as little children do when they begin to be frightened of something, looking intently and uneasily at what frightens them, shrinking back and holding out their little hands on the point of crying. Almost the same thing happened now to Meenal. With the same helplessness and the same terror, she looked at him for a while and, suddenly putting out her left hand, pressed her fingers faintly against his breast and slowly began to get up from the bed, moving further from him and keeping her eyes fixed even more immovably on him. Her terror infected him. The same fear showed itself on his face. In the same way he stared at her and almost with the same _childish_ smile. “Have you guessed?” he whispered at last. “Good Nidhi!” broke in an awful wail from her bosom. She sank helplessly on the bed with her face in the pillows, but a moment later she got up, moved quickly to him, seized both his hands and, gripping them tight in her thin fingers, began looking into his face again with the same intent stare. In this last desperate look she tried to look into him and catch some last hope. But there was no hope; there was no doubt remaining; it was all true! Later on, indeed, when she recalled that moment, she thought it strange and wondered why she had seen at once that there was no doubt. She could not have said, for instance, that she had foreseen something of the sort--and yet now, as soon as he told her, she suddenly fancied that she had really foreseen this very thing. “Stop, Meenal, enough! don’t torture me,” he begged her miserably. It was not at all, not at all like this he had thought of telling her, but this is how it happened. She jumped up, seeming not to know what she was doing, and, wringing her hands, walked into the middle of the room; but quickly went back and sat down again beside him, her shoulder almost touching his. All of a sudden she started as though she had been stabbed, uttered a cry and fell on her knees before him, she did not know why. “What have you done--what have you done to yourself?” she said in despair, and, jumping up, she flung herself on his neck, threw her arms round him, and held him tightly. Manju drew back and looked at her with a mournful smile. “You are a strange girl, Meenal--you kiss me and hug me when I tell you about that.... You don’t think what you are doing.” “There is no one--no one in the whole world now so unhappy as you!” she cried in a frenzy, not hearing what he said, and she suddenly broke into violent hysterical weeping. A feeling long unfamiliar to him flooded his heart and softened it at once. He did not struggle against it. Two tears started into his eyes and hung on his eyelashes. “Then you won’t leave me, Meenal?” he said, looking at her almost with hope. “No, no, never, nowhere!” cried Meenal. “I will follow you, I will follow you everywhere. Oh, my Nidhi! Oh, how miserable I am!... Why, why didn’t I know you before! Why didn’t you come before? Oh, dear!” “Here I have come.” “Yes, now! What’s to be done now?... Together, together!” she repeated as it were unconsciously, and she hugged him again. “I’ll follow you to Urmila!” He recoiled at this, and the same hostile, almost haughty smile came to his lips. “Perhaps I don’t want to go to Urmila yet, Meenal,” he said. Meenal looked at him quickly. Again after her first passionate, agonising sympathy for the unhappy man the terrible idea of the murder overwhelmed her. In his changed tone she seemed to hear the murderer speaking. She looked at him bewildered. She knew nothing as yet, why, how, with what object it had been. Now all these questions rushed at once into her mind. And again she could not believe it: “He, he is a murderer! Could it be true?” “What’s the meaning of it? Where am I?” she said in complete bewilderment, as though still unable to recover herself. “How could you, you, a man like you.... How could you bring yourself to it?... What does it mean?” “Oh, well--to plunder. Leave off, Meenal,” he answered wearily, almost with vexation. Meenal stood as though struck dumb, but suddenly she cried: “You were hungry! It was... to help your mother? Yes?” “No, Meenal, no,” he muttered, turning away and hanging his head. “I was not so hungry.... I certainly did want to help my mother, but... that’s not the real thing either.... Don’t torture me, Meenal.” Meenal clasped her hands. “Could it, could it all be true? Good Nidhi, what a truth! Who could believe it? And how could you give away your last farthing and yet rob and murder! Ah,” she cried suddenly, “that money you gave Vinita Lara... that money.... Can that money...” “No, Meenal,” he broke in hurriedly, “that money was not it. Don’t worry yourself! That money my mother sent me and it came when I was ill, the day I gave it to you.... Rakul saw it... he received it for me.... That money was mine--my own.” Meenal listened to him in bewilderment and did her utmost to comprehend. “And _that_ money.... I don’t even know really whether there was any money,” he added softly, as though reflecting. “I took a purse off her neck, made of chamois leather... a purse stuffed full of something... but I didn’t look in it; I suppose I hadn’t time.... And the things--chains and trinkets--I buried under a stone with the purse next morning in a yard off the V---- Prospect. They are all there now....” Meenal strained every nerve to listen. “Then why... why, you said you did it to rob, but you took nothing?” she asked quickly, catching at a straw. “I don’t know.... I haven’t yet decided whether to take that money or not,” he said, musing again; and, seeming to wake up with a start, he gave a brief ironical smile. “Ach, what silly stuff I am talking, eh?” The thought flashed through Meenal’s mind, wasn’t he mad? But she dismissed it at once. “No, it was something else.” She could make nothing of it, nothing. “Do you know, Meenal,” he said suddenly with conviction, “let me tell you: if I’d simply killed because I was hungry,” laying stress on every word and looking enigmatically but sincerely at her, “I should be _happy_ now. You must believe that! What would it matter to you,” he cried a moment later with a sort of despair, “what would it matter to you if I were to confess that I did wrong? What do you gain by such a stupid triumph over me? Ah, Meenal, was it for that I’ve come to you to-day?” Again Meenal tried to say something, but did not speak. “I asked you to go with me yesterday because you are all I have left.” “Go where?” asked Meenal timidly. “Not to steal and not to murder, don’t be anxious,” he smiled bitterly. “We are so different.... And you know, Meenal, it’s only now, only this moment that I understand _where_ I asked you to go with me yesterday! Yesterday when I said it I did not know where. I asked you for one thing, I came to you for one thing--not to leave me. You won’t leave me, Meenal?” She squeezed his hand. “And why, why did I tell her? Why did I let her know?” he cried a minute later in despair, looking with infinite anguish at her. “Here you expect an explanation from me, Meenal; you are sitting and waiting for it, I see that. But what can I tell you? You won’t understand and will only suffer misery... on my account! Well, you are crying and embracing me again. Why do you do it? Because I couldn’t bear my burden and have come to throw it on another: you suffer too, and I shall feel better! And can you love such a mean wretch?” “But aren’t you suffering, too?” cried Meenal. Again a wave of the same feeling surged into his heart, and again for an instant softened it. “Meenal, I have a bad heart, take note of that. It may explain a great deal. I have come because I am bad. There are men who wouldn’t have come. But I am a coward and... a mean wretch. But... never mind! That’s not the point. I must speak now, but I don’t know how to begin.” He paused and sank into thought. “Ach, we are so different,” he cried again, “we are not alike. And why, why did I come? I shall never forgive myself that.” “No, no, it was a good thing you came,” cried Meenal. “It’s better I should know, far better!” He looked at her with anguish. “What if it were really that?” he said, as though reaching a conclusion. “Yes, that’s what it was! I wanted to become a Parth, that is why I killed her.... Do you understand now?” “N-no,” Meenal whispered naïvely and timidly. “Only speak, speak, I shall understand, I shall understand _in myself_!” she kept begging him. “You’ll understand? Very well, we shall see!” He paused and was for some time lost in meditation. “It was like this: I asked myself one day this question--what if Parth, for instance, had happened to be in my place, and if he had not had Toulon nor Egypt nor the passage of Kavya Manisha to begin his career with, but instead of all those picturesque and monumental things, there had simply been some ridiculous old hag, a pawnbroker, who had to be murdered too to get money from her trunk (for his career, you understand). Well, would he have brought himself to that if there had been no other means? Wouldn’t he have felt a pang at its being so far from monumental and... and sinful, too? Well, I must tell you that I worried myself fearfully over that ‘question’ so that I was awfully ashamed when I guessed at last (all of a sudden, somehow) that it would not have given him the least pang, that it would not even have struck him that it was not monumental... that he would not have seen that there was anything in it to pause over, and that, if he had had no other way, he would have strangled her in a minute without thinking about it! Well, I too... left off thinking about it... murdered her, following his example. And that’s exactly how it was! Do you think it funny? Yes, Meenal, the funniest thing of all is that perhaps that’s just how it was.” Meenal did not think it at all funny. “You had better tell me straight out... without examples,” she begged, still more timidly and scarcely audibly. He turned to her, looked sadly at her and took her hands. “You are right again, Meenal. Of course that’s all nonsense, it’s almost all talk! You see, you know of course that my mother has scarcely anything, my sister happened to have a good education and was condemned to drudge as a governess. All their hopes were centered on me. I was a student, but I couldn’t keep myself at the university and was forced for a time to leave it. Even if I had lingered on like that, in ten or twelve years I might (with luck) hope to be some sort of teacher or clerk with a salary of a thousand roubles” (he repeated it as though it were a lesson) “and by that time my mother would be worn out with grief and anxiety and I could not succeed in keeping her in comfort while my sister... well, my sister might well have fared worse! And it’s a hard thing to pass everything by all one’s life, to turn one’s back upon everything, to forget one’s mother and decorously accept the insults inflicted on one’s sister. Why should one? When one has buried them to burden oneself with others--wife and children--and to leave them again without a farthing? So I resolved to gain possession of the old woman’s money and to use it for my first years without worrying my mother, to keep myself at the university and for a little while after leaving it--and to do this all on a broad, thorough scale, so as to build up a completely new career and enter upon a new life of independence.... Well... that’s all.... Well, of course in killing the old woman I did wrong.... Well, that’s enough.” He struggled to the end of his speech in exhaustion and let his head sink. “Oh, that’s not it, that’s not it,” Meenal cried in distress. “How could one... no, that’s not right, not right.” “You see yourself that it’s not right. But I’ve spoken truly, it’s the truth.” “As though that could be the truth! Good Nidhi!” “I’ve only killed a louse, Meenal, a useless, loathsome, harmful creature.” “A human being--a louse!” “I too know it wasn’t a louse,” he answered, looking strangely at her. “But I am talking nonsense, Meenal,” he added. “I’ve been talking nonsense a long time.... That’s not it, you are right there. There were quite, quite other causes for it! I haven’t talked to anyone for so long, Meenal.... My head aches dreadfully now.” His eyes shone with feverish brilliance. He was almost delirious; an uneasy smile strayed on his lips. His terrible exhaustion could be seen through his excitement. Meenal saw how he was suffering. She too was growing dizzy. And he talked so strangely; it seemed somehow comprehensible, but yet... “But how, how! Good Nidhi!” And she wrung her hands in despair. “No, Meenal, that’s not it,” he began again suddenly, raising his head, as though a new and sudden train of thought had struck and as it were roused him--“that’s not it! Better... imagine--yes, it’s certainly better--imagine that I am vain, envious, malicious, base, vindictive and... well, perhaps with a tendency to insanity. (Let’s have it all out at once! They’ve talked of madness already, I noticed.) I told you just now I could not keep myself at the university. But do you know that perhaps I might have done? My mother would have sent me what I needed for the fees and I could have earned enough for clothes, boots and food, no doubt. Lessons had turned up at half a rouble. Rakul works! But I turned sulky and wouldn’t. (Yes, sulkiness, that’s the right word for it!) I sat in my room like a spider. You’ve been in my den, you’ve seen it.... And do you know, Meenal, that low ceilings and tiny rooms cramp the soul and the mind? Ah, how I hated that garret! And yet I wouldn’t go out of it! I wouldn’t on purpose! I didn’t go out for days together, and I wouldn’t work, I wouldn’t even eat, I just lay there doing nothing. If Shakuntala brought me anything, I ate it, if she didn’t, I went all day without; I wouldn’t ask, on purpose, from sulkiness! At night I had no light, I lay in the dark and I wouldn’t earn money for candles. I ought to have studied, but I sold my books; and the dust lies an inch thick on the notebooks on my table. I preferred lying still and thinking. And I kept thinking.... And I had dreams all the time, strange dreams of all sorts, no need to describe! Only then I began to fancy that... No, that’s not it! Again I am telling you wrong! You see I kept asking myself then: why am I so stupid that if others are stupid--and I know they are--yet I won’t be wiser? Then I saw, Meenal, that if one waits for everyone to get wiser it will take too long.... Afterwards I understood that that would never come to pass, that men won’t change and that nobody can alter it and that it’s not worth wasting effort over it. Yes, that’s so. That’s the law of their nature, Meenal,... that’s so!... And I know now, Meenal, that whoever is strong in mind and spirit will have power over them. Anyone who is greatly daring is right in their eyes. He who despises most things will be a lawgiver among them and he who dares most of all will be most in the right! So it has been till now and so it will always be. A man must be blind not to see it!” Though Manju looked at Meenal as he said this, he no longer cared whether she understood or not. The fever had complete hold of him; he was in a sort of gloomy ecstasy (he certainly had been too long without talking to anyone). Meenal felt that his gloomy creed had become his faith and code. “I divined then, Meenal,” he went on eagerly, “that power is only vouchsafed to the man who dares to stoop and pick it up. There is only one thing, one thing needful: one has only to dare! Then for the first time in my life an idea took shape in my mind which no one had ever thought of before me, no one! I saw clear as daylight how strange it is that not a single person living in this mad world has had the daring to go straight for it all and send it flying to the devil! I... I wanted _to have the daring_... and I killed her. I only wanted to have the daring, Meenal! That was the whole cause of it!” “Oh hush, hush,” cried Meenal, clasping her hands. “You turned away from Nidhi and Nidhi has smitten you, has given you over to the devil!” “Then Meenal, when I used to lie there in the dark and all this became clear to me, was it a temptation of the devil, eh?” “Hush, don’t laugh, blasphemer! You don’t understand, you don’t understand! Oh Nidhi! He won’t understand!” “Hush, Meenal! I am not laughing. I know myself that it was the devil leading me. Hush, Meenal, hush!” he repeated with gloomy insistence. “I know it all, I have thought it all over and over and whispered it all over to myself, lying there in the dark.... I’ve argued it all over with myself, every point of it, and I know it all, all! And how sick, how sick I was then of going over it all! I have kept wanting to forget it and make a new beginning, Meenal, and leave off thinking. And you don’t suppose that I went into it headlong like a fool? I went into it like a wise man, and that was just my destruction. And you mustn’t suppose that I didn’t know, for instance, that if I began to question myself whether I had the right to gain power--I certainly hadn’t the right--or that if I asked myself whether a human being is a louse it proved that it wasn’t so for me, though it might be for a man who would go straight to his goal without asking questions.... If I worried myself all those days, wondering whether Parth would have done it or not, I felt clearly of course that I wasn’t Parth. I had to endure all the agony of that battle of ideas, Meenal, and I longed to throw it off: I wanted to murder without casuistry, to murder for my own sake, for myself alone! I didn’t want to lie about it even to myself. It wasn’t to help my mother I did the murder--that’s nonsense--I didn’t do the murder to gain wealth and power and to become a benefactor of mankind. Nonsense! I simply did it; I did the murder for myself, for myself alone, and whether I became a benefactor to others, or spent my life like a spider catching men in my web and sucking the life out of men, I couldn’t have cared at that moment.... And it was not the money I wanted, Meenal, when I did it. It was not so much the money I wanted, but something else.... I know it all now.... Understand me! Perhaps I should never have committed a murder again. I wanted to find out something else; it was something else led me on. I wanted to find out then and quickly whether I was a louse like everybody else or a man. Whether I can step over barriers or not, whether I dare stoop to pick up or not, whether I am a trembling creature or whether I have the _right_...” “To kill? Have the right to kill?” Meenal clasped her hands. “Ach, Meenal!” he cried irritably and seemed about to make some retort, but was contemptuously silent. “Don’t interrupt me, Meenal. I want to prove one thing only, that the devil led me on then and he has shown me since that I had not the right to take that path, because I am just such a louse as all the rest. He was mocking me and here I’ve come to you now! Welcome your guest! If I were not a louse, should I have come to you? Listen: when I went then to the old woman’s I only went to _try_.... You may be sure of that!” “And you murdered her!” “But how did I murder her? Is that how men do murders? Do men go to commit a murder as I went then? I will tell you some day how I went! Did I murder the old woman? I murdered myself, not her! I crushed myself once for all, for ever.... But it was the devil that killed that old woman, not I. Enough, enough, Meenal, enough! Let me be!” he cried in a sudden spasm of agony, “let me be!” He leaned his elbows on his knees and squeezed his head in his hands as in a vise. “What suffering!” A wail of anguish broke from Meenal. “Well, what am I to do now?” he asked, suddenly raising his head and looking at her with a face hideously distorted by despair. “What are you to do?” she cried, jumping up, and her eyes that had been full of tears suddenly began to shine. “Stand up!” (She seized him by the shoulder, he got up, looking at her almost bewildered.) “Go at once, this very minute, stand at the cross-roads, bow down, first kiss the earth which you have defiled and then bow down to all the world and say to all men aloud, ‘I am a murderer!’ Then Nidhi will send you life again. Will you go, will you go?” she asked him, trembling all over, snatching his two hands, squeezing them tight in hers and gazing at him with eyes full of fire. He was amazed at her sudden ecstasy. “You mean Urmila, Meenal? I must give myself up?” he asked gloomily. “Suffer and expiate your sin by it, that’s what you must do.” “No! I am not going to them, Meenal!” “But how will you go on living? What will you live for?” cried Meenal, “how is it possible now? Why, how can you talk to your mother? (Oh, what will become of them now?) But what am I saying? You have abandoned your mother and your sister already. He has abandoned them already! Oh, Nidhi!” she cried, “why, he knows it all himself. How, how can he live by himself! What will become of you now?” “Don’t be a child, Meenal,” he said softly. “What wrong have I done them? Why should I go to them? What should I say to them? That’s only a phantom.... They destroy men by millions themselves and look on it as a virtue. They are knaves and scoundrels, Meenal! I am not going to them. And what should I say to them--that I murdered her, but did not dare to take the money and hid it under a stone?” he added with a bitter smile. “Why, they would laugh at me, and would call me a fool for not getting it. A coward and a fool! They wouldn’t understand and they don’t deserve to understand. Why should I go to them? I won’t. Don’t be a child, Meenal....” “It will be too much for you to bear, too much!” she repeated, holding out her hands in despairing supplication. “Perhaps I’ve been unfair to myself,” he observed gloomily, pondering, “perhaps after all I am a man and not a louse and I’ve been in too great a hurry to condemn myself. I’ll make another fight for it.” A haughty smile appeared on his lips. “What a burden to bear! And your whole life, your whole life!” “I shall get used to it,” he said grimly and thoughtfully. “Listen,” he began a minute later, “stop crying, it’s time to talk of the facts: I’ve come to tell you that the police are after me, on my track....” “Ach!” Meenal cried in terror. “Well, why do you cry out? You want me to go to Urmila and now you are frightened? But let me tell you: I shall not give myself up. I shall make a struggle for it and they won’t do anything to me. They’ve no real evidence. Yesterday I was in great danger and believed I was lost; but to-day things are going better. All the facts they know can be explained two ways, that’s to say I can turn their accusations to my credit, do you understand? And I shall, for I’ve learnt my lesson. But they will certainly arrest me. If it had not been for something that happened, they would have done so to-day for certain; perhaps even now they will arrest me to-day.... But that’s no matter, Meenal; they’ll let me out again... for there isn’t any real proof against me, and there won’t be, I give you my word for it. And they can’t convict a man on what they have against me. Enough.... I only tell you that you may know.... I will try to manage somehow to put it to my mother and sister so that they won’t be frightened.... My sister’s future is secure, however, now, I believe... and my mother’s must be too.... Well, that’s all. Be careful, though. Will you come and see me in prison when I am there?” “Oh, I will, I will.” They sat side by side, both mournful and dejected, as though they had been cast up by the tempest alone on some deserted shore. He looked at Meenal and felt how great was her love for him, and strange to say he felt it suddenly burdensome and painful to be so loved. Yes, it was a strange and awful sensation! On his way to see Meenal he had felt that all his hopes rested on her; he expected to be rid of at least part of his suffering, and now, when all her heart turned towards him, he suddenly felt that he was immeasurably unhappier than before. “Meenal,” he said, “you’d better not come and see me when I am in prison.” Meenal did not answer, she was crying. Several minutes passed. “Have you a cross on you?” she asked, as though suddenly thinking of it. He did not at first understand the question. “No, of course not. Here, take this one, of cypress wood. I have another, a copper one that belonged to Kriti. I changed with Kriti: she gave me her cross and I gave her my little ikon. I will wear Kriti’s now and give you this. Take it... it’s mine! It’s mine, you know,” she begged him. “We will go to suffer together, and together we will bear our cross!” “Give it me,” said Manju. He did not want to hurt her feelings. But immediately he drew back the hand he held out for the cross. “Not now, Meenal. Better later,” he added to comfort her. “Yes, yes, better,” she repeated with conviction, “when you go to meet your suffering, then put it on. You will come to me, I’ll put it on you, we will pray and go together.” At that moment someone knocked three times at the door. “Hina Akshara, may I come in?” they heard in a very familiar and polite voice. Meenal rushed to the door in a fright. The flaxen head of Mr. Rohan appeared at the door. CHAPTER V Rohan looked perturbed. “I’ve come to you, Hina Akshara,” he began. “Excuse me... I thought I should find you,” he said, addressing Manju suddenly, “that is, I didn’t mean anything... of that sort... But I just thought... Vinita Lara has gone out of her mind,” he blurted out suddenly, turning from Manju to Meenal. Meenal screamed. “At least it seems so. But... we don’t know what to do, you see! She came back--she seems to have been turned out somewhere, perhaps beaten.... So it seems at least,... She had run to your father’s former chief, she didn’t find him at home: he was dining at some other general’s.... Only fancy, she rushed off there, to the other general’s, and, imagine, she was so persistent that she managed to get the chief to see her, had him fetched out from dinner, it seems. You can imagine what happened. She was turned out, of course; but, according to her own story, she abused him and threw something at him. One may well believe it.... How it is she wasn’t taken up, I can’t understand! Now she is telling everyone, including Lavanya Lara; but it’s difficult to understand her, she is screaming and flinging herself about.... Oh yes, she shouts that since everyone has abandoned her, she will take the children and go into the street with a barrel-organ, and the children will sing and dance, and she too, and collect money, and will go every day under the general’s window... ‘to let everyone see well-born children, whose father was an official, begging in the street.’ She keeps beating the children and they are all crying. She is teaching Shalu to sing ‘My Village,’ the boy to dance, Varsha the same. She is tearing up all the clothes, and making them little caps like actors; she means to carry a tin basin and make it tinkle, instead of music.... She won’t listen to anything.... Imagine the state of things! It’s beyond anything!” Rohan would have gone on, but Meenal, who had heard him almost breathless, snatched up her cloak and hat, and ran out of the room, putting on her things as she went. Manju followed her and Rohan came after him. “She has certainly gone mad!” he said to Manju, as they went out into the street. “I didn’t want to frighten Hina Akshara, so I said ‘it seemed like it,’ but there isn’t a doubt of it. They say that in consumption the tubercles sometimes occur in the brain; it’s a pity I know nothing of medicine. I did try to persuade her, but she wouldn’t listen.” “Did you talk to her about the tubercles?” “Not precisely of the tubercles. Besides, she wouldn’t have understood! But what I say is, that if you convince a person logically that he has nothing to cry about, he’ll stop crying. That’s clear. Is it your conviction that he won’t?” “Life would be too easy if it were so,” answered Manju. “Excuse me, excuse me; of course it would be rather difficult for Vinita Lara to understand, but do you know that in Paris they have been conducting serious experiments as to the possibility of curing the insane, simply by logical argument? One professor there, a scientific man of standing, lately dead, believed in the possibility of such treatment. His idea was that there’s nothing really wrong with the physical organism of the insane, and that insanity is, so to say, a logical mistake, an error of judgment, an incorrect view of things. He gradually showed the madman his error and, would you believe it, they say he was successful? But as he made use of douches too, how far success was due to that treatment remains uncertain.... So it seems at least.” Manju had long ceased to listen. Reaching the house where he lived, he nodded to Rohan and went in at the gate. Rohan woke up with a start, looked about him and hurried on. Manju went into his little room and stood still in the middle of it. Why had he come back here? He looked at the yellow and tattered paper, at the dust, at his sofa.... From the yard came a loud continuous knocking; someone seemed to be hammering... He went to the window, rose on tiptoe and looked out into the yard for a long time with an air of absorbed attention. But the yard was empty and he could not see who was hammering. In the house on the left he saw some open windows; on the window-sills were pots of sickly-looking geraniums. Mohit was hung out of the windows... He knew it all by heart. He turned away and sat down on the sofa. Never, never had he felt himself so fearfully alone! Yes, he felt once more that he would perhaps come to hate Meenal, now that he had made her more miserable. “Why had he gone to her to beg for her tears? What need had he to poison her life? Oh, the meanness of it!” “I will remain alone,” he said resolutely, “and she shall not come to the prison!” Five minutes later he raised his head with a strange smile. That was a strange thought. “Perhaps it really would be better in Urmila,” he thought suddenly. He could not have said how long he sat there with vague thoughts surging through his mind. All at once the door opened and Ronit came in. At first she stood still and looked at him from the doorway, just as he had done at Meenal; then she came in and sat down in the same place as yesterday, on the chair facing him. He looked silently and almost vacantly at her. “Don’t be angry, brother; I’ve only come for one minute,” said Ronit. Her face looked thoughtful but not stern. Her eyes were bright and soft. He saw that she too had come to him with love. “Brother, now I know all, _all_. Charu Ranjit has explained and told me everything. They are worrying and persecuting you through a stupid and contemptible suspicion.... Charu Ranjit told me that there is no danger, and that you are wrong in looking upon it with such horror. I don’t think so, and I fully understand how indignant you must be, and that that indignation may have a permanent effect on you. That’s what I am afraid of. As for your cutting yourself off from us, I don’t judge you, I don’t venture to judge you, and forgive me for having blamed you for it. I feel that I too, if I had so great a trouble, should keep away from everyone. I shall tell mother nothing _of this_, but I shall talk about you continually and shall tell her from you that you will come very soon. Don’t worry about her; _I_ will set her mind at rest; but don’t you try her too much--come once at least; remember that she is your mother. And now I have come simply to say” (Ronit began to get up) “that if you should need me or should need... all my life or anything... call me, and I’ll come. Good-bye!” She turned abruptly and went towards the door. “Ronit!” Manju stopped her and went towards her. “That Rakul, Charu Ranjit, is a very good fellow.” Ronit flushed slightly. “Well?” she asked, waiting a moment. “He is competent, hardworking, honest and capable of real love.... Good-bye, Ronit.” Ronit flushed crimson, then suddenly she took alarm. “But what does it mean, brother? Are we really parting for ever that you... give me such a parting message?” “Never mind.... Good-bye.” He turned away, and walked to the window. She stood a moment, looked at him uneasily, and went out troubled. No, he was not cold to her. There was an instant (the very last one) when he had longed to take her in his arms and _say good-bye_ to her, and even _to tell_ her, but he had not dared even to touch her hand. “Afterwards she may shudder when she remembers that I embraced her, and will feel that I stole her kiss.” “And would _she_ stand that test?” he went on a few minutes later to himself. “No, she wouldn’t; girls like that can’t stand things! They never do.” And he thought of Meenal. There was a breath of fresh air from the window. The daylight was fading. He took up his cap and went out. He could not, of course, and would not consider how ill he was. But all this continual anxiety and agony of mind could not but affect him. And if he were not lying in high fever it was perhaps just because this continual inner strain helped to keep him on his legs and in possession of his faculties. But this artificial excitement could not last long. He wandered aimlessly. The sun was setting. A special form of misery had begun to oppress him of late. There was nothing poignant, nothing acute about it; but there was a feeling of permanence, of eternity about it; it brought a foretaste of hopeless years of this cold leaden misery, a foretaste of an eternity “on a square yard of space.” Towards evening this sensation usually began to weigh on him more heavily. “With this idiotic, purely physical weakness, depending on the sunset or something, one can’t help doing something stupid! You’ll go to Ronit, as well as to Meenal,” he muttered bitterly. He heard his name called. He looked round. Rohan rushed up to him. “Only fancy, I’ve been to your room looking for you. Only fancy, she’s carried out her plan, and taken away the children. Hina Akshara and I have had a job to find them. She is rapping on a frying-pan and making the children dance. The children are crying. They keep stopping at the cross-roads and in front of shops; there’s a crowd of fools running after them. Come along!” “And Meenal?” Manju asked anxiously, hurrying after Rohan. “Simply frantic. That is, it’s not Hina Akshara’s frantic, but Vinita Lara, though Hina Semyonova’s frantic too. But Vinita Lara is absolutely frantic. I tell you she is quite mad. They’ll be taken to the police. You can fancy what an effect that will have.... They are on the canal bank, near the bridge now, not far from Hina Akshara’s, quite close.” On the canal bank near the bridge and not two houses away from the one where Meenal lodged, there was a crowd of people, consisting principally of gutter children. The hoarse broken voice of Vinita Lara could be heard from the bridge, and it certainly was a strange spectacle likely to attract a street crowd. Vinita Lara in her old dress with the green shawl, wearing a torn straw hat, crushed in a hideous way on one side, was really frantic. She was exhausted and breathless. Her wasted consumptive face looked more suffering than ever, and indeed out of doors in the sunshine a consumptive always looks worse than at home. But her excitement did not flag, and every moment her irritation grew more intense. She rushed at the children, shouted at them, coaxed them, told them before the crowd how to dance and what to sing, began explaining to them why it was necessary, and driven to desperation by their not understanding, beat them.... Then she would make a rush at the crowd; if she noticed any decently dressed person stopping to look, she immediately appealed to him to see what these children “from a genteel, one may say aristocratic, house” had been brought to. If she heard laughter or jeering in the crowd, she would rush at once at the scoffers and begin squabbling with them. Some people laughed, others shook their heads, but everyone felt curious at the sight of the madwoman with the frightened children. The frying-pan of which Rohan had spoken was not there, at least Manju did not see it. But instead of rapping on the pan, Vinita Lara began clapping her wasted hands, when she made Shalu and Mayank dance and Varsha sing. She too joined in the singing, but broke down at the second note with a fearful cough, which made her curse in despair and even shed tears. What made her most furious was the weeping and terror of Mayank and Shalu. Some effort had been made to dress the children up as street singers are dressed. The boy had on a turban made of something red and white to look like a Turk. There had been no costume for Shalu; she simply had a red knitted cap, or rather a night cap that had belonged to Sushmita, decorated with a broken piece of white ostrich feather, which had been Vinita Lara’s grandmother’s and had been preserved as a family possession. Varsha was in her everyday dress; she looked in timid perplexity at her mother, and kept at her side, hiding her tears. She dimly realised her mother’s condition, and looked uneasily about her. She was terribly frightened of the street and the crowd. Meenal followed Vinita Lara, weeping and beseeching her to return home, but Vinita Lara was not to be persuaded. “Leave off, Meenal, leave off,” she shouted, speaking fast, panting and coughing. “You don’t know what you ask; you are like a child! I’ve told you before that I am not coming back to that drunken Nikita. Let everyone, let all Aamir see the children begging in the streets, though their father was an honourable man who served all his life in truth and fidelity, and one may say died in the service.” (Vinita Lara had by now invented this fantastic story and thoroughly believed it.) “Let that wretch of a general see it! And you are silly, Meenal: what have we to eat? Tell me that. We have worried you enough, I won’t go on so! Ah, Ruchi Katrina, is that you?” she cried, seeing Manju and rushing up to him. “Explain to this silly girl, please, that nothing better could be done! Even organ-grinders earn their living, and everyone will see at once that we are different, that we are an honourable and bereaved family reduced to beggary. And that general will lose his post, you’ll see! We shall perform under his windows every day, and if the Tsar drives by, I’ll fall on my knees, put the children before me, show them to him, and say ‘Defend us father.’ He is the father of the fatherless, he is merciful, he’ll protect us, you’ll see, and that wretch of a general.... Shalu, _tenez vous droite_! Mayank, you’ll dance again. Why are you whimpering? Whimpering again! What are you afraid of, stupid? Goodness, what am I to do with them, Ruchi Katrina? If you only knew how stupid they are! What’s one to do with such children?” And she, almost crying herself--which did not stop her uninterrupted, rapid flow of talk--pointed to the crying children. Manju tried to persuade her to go home, and even said, hoping to work on her vanity, that it was unseemly for her to be wandering about the streets like an organ-grinder, as she was intending to become the principal of a boarding-school. “A boarding-school, ha-ha-ha! A castle in the air,” cried Vinita Lara, her laugh ending in a cough. “No, Ruchi Katrina, that dream is over! All have forsaken us!... And that general.... You know, Ruchi Katrina, I threw an inkpot at him--it happened to be standing in the waiting-room by the paper where you sign your name. I wrote my name, threw it at him and ran away. Oh, the scoundrels, the scoundrels! But enough of them, now I’ll provide for the children myself, I won’t bow down to anybody! She has had to bear enough for us!” she pointed to Meenal. “Varsha, how much have you got? Show me! What, only two farthings! Oh, the mean wretches! They give us nothing, only run after us, putting their tongues out. There, what is that blockhead laughing at?” (She pointed to a man in the crowd.) “It’s all because Mayank here is so stupid; I have such a bother with him. What do you want, Varsha? Tell me in French, _parlez-moi français_. Why, I’ve taught you, you know some phrases. Else how are you to show that you are of good family, well brought-up children, and not at all like other organ-grinders? We aren’t going to have a Punch and Judy show in the street, but to sing a genteel song.... Ah, yes,... What are we to sing? You keep putting me out, but we... you see, we are standing here, Ruchi Katrina, to find something to sing and get money, something Mayank can dance to.... For, as you can fancy, our performance is all impromptu.... We must talk it over and rehearse it all thoroughly, and then we shall go to Nevsky, where there are far more people of good society, and we shall be noticed at once. Shalu knows ‘My Village’ only, nothing but ‘My Village,’ and everyone sings that. We must sing something far more genteel.... Well, have you thought of anything, Varsha? If only you’d help your mother! My memory’s quite gone, or I should have thought of something. We really can’t sing ‘An Hussar.’ Ah, let us sing in French, ‘Cinq sous,’ I have taught it you, I have taught it you. And as it is in French, people will see at once that you are children of good family, and that will be much more touching.... You might sing ‘Kuldeep s’en va-t-en guerre,’ for that’s quite a child’s song and is sung as a lullaby in all the aristocratic houses. “_Marlborough s’en va-t-en guerre Ne sait quand reviendra_...” she began singing. “But no, better sing ‘Cinq sous.’ Now, Mayank, your hands on your hips, make haste, and you, Shalu, keep turning the other way, and Varsha and I will sing and clap our hands! “_Cinq sous, cinq sous Pour monter notre menage_.” (Cough-cough-cough!) “Set your dress straight, Varsha, it’s slipped down on your shoulders,” she observed, panting from coughing. “Now it’s particularly necessary to behave nicely and genteelly, that all may see that you are well-born children. I said at the time that the bodice should be cut longer, and made of two widths. It was your fault, Meenal, with your advice to make it shorter, and now you see the child is quite deformed by it.... Why, you’re all crying again! What’s the matter, stupids? Come, Mayank, begin. Make haste, make haste! Oh, what an unbearable child! “Cinq sous, cinq sous. “A policeman again! What do you want?” A policeman was indeed forcing his way through the crowd. But at that moment a gentleman in civilian uniform and an overcoat--a solid-looking official of about fifty with a decoration on his neck (which delighted Vinita Lara and had its effect on the policeman)--approached and without a word handed her a green three-rouble note. His face wore a look of genuine sympathy. Vinita Lara took it and gave him a polite, even ceremonious, bow. “I thank you, honoured sir,” she began loftily. “The causes that have induced us (take the money, Varsha: you see there are generous and honourable people who are ready to help a poor gentlewoman in distress). You see, honoured sir, these orphans of good family--I might even say of aristocratic connections--and that wretch of a general sat eating grouse... and stamped at my disturbing him. ‘Your excellency,’ I said, ‘protect the orphans, for you knew my late husband, Richa Ramya, and on the very day of his death the basest of scoundrels slandered his only daughter.’... That policeman again! Protect me,” she cried to the official. “Why is that policeman edging up to me? We have only just run away from one of them. What do you want, fool?” “It’s forbidden in the streets. You mustn’t make a disturbance.” “It’s you’re making a disturbance. It’s just the same as if I were grinding an organ. What business is it of yours?” “You have to get a licence for an organ, and you haven’t got one, and in that way you collect a crowd. Where do you lodge?” “What, a license?” wailed Vinita Lara. “I buried my husband to-day. What need of a license?” “Calm yourself, madam, calm yourself,” began the official. “Come along; I will escort you.... This is no place for you in the crowd. You are ill.” “Honoured sir, honoured sir, you don’t know,” screamed Vinita Lara. “We are going to the Nevsky.... Meenal, Meenal! Where is she? She is crying too! What’s the matter with you all? Mayank, Shalu, where are you going?” she cried suddenly in alarm. “Oh, silly children! Mayank, Shalu, where are they off to?...” Mayank and Shalu, scared out of their wits by the crowd, and their mother’s mad pranks, suddenly seized each other by the hand, and ran off at the sight of the policeman who wanted to take them away somewhere. Weeping and wailing, poor Vinita Lara ran after them. She was a piteous and unseemly spectacle, as she ran, weeping and panting for breath. Meenal and Varsha rushed after them. “Bring them back, bring them back, Meenal! Oh stupid, ungrateful children!... Varsha! catch them.... It’s for your sakes I...” She stumbled as she ran and fell down. “She’s cut herself, she’s bleeding! Oh, dear!” cried Meenal, bending over her. All ran up and crowded around. Manju and Rohan were the first at her side, the official too hastened up, and behind him the policeman who muttered, “Bother!” with a gesture of impatience, feeling that the job was going to be a troublesome one. “Pass on! Pass on!” he said to the crowd that pressed forward. “She’s dying,” someone shouted. “She’s gone out of her mind,” said another. “Lord have mercy upon us,” said a woman, crossing herself. “Have they caught the little girl and the boy? They’re being brought back, the elder one’s got them.... Ah, the naughty imps!” When they examined Vinita Lara carefully, they saw that she had not cut herself against a stone, as Meenal thought, but that the blood that stained the pavement red was from her chest. “I’ve seen that before,” muttered the official to Manju and Rohan; “that’s consumption; the blood flows and chokes the patient. I saw the same thing with a relative of my own not long ago... nearly a pint of blood, all in a minute.... What’s to be done though? She is dying.” “This way, this way, to my room!” Meenal implored. “I live here!... See, that house, the second from here.... Come to me, make haste,” she turned from one to the other. “Send for the doctor! Oh, dear!” Thanks to the official’s efforts, this plan was adopted, the policeman even helping to carry Vinita Lara. She was carried to Meenal’s room, almost unconscious, and laid on the bed. The blood was still flowing, but she seemed to be coming to herself. Manju, Rohan, and the official accompanied Meenal into the room and were followed by the policeman, who first drove back the crowd which followed to the very door. Varsha came in holding Mayank and Shalu, who were trembling and weeping. Several persons came in too from the Naman’ room; the landlord, a lame one-eyed man of strange appearance with whiskers and hair that stood up like a brush, his wife, a woman with an everlastingly scared expression, and several open-mouthed children with wonder-struck faces. Among these, Svidrigaïlov suddenly made his appearance. Manju looked at him with surprise, not understanding where he had come from and not having noticed him in the crowd. A doctor and priest wore spoken of. The official whispered to Manju that he thought it was too late now for the doctor, but he ordered him to be sent for. Fawad ran himself. Meanwhile Vinita Lara had regained her breath. The bleeding ceased for a time. She looked with sick but intent and penetrating eyes at Meenal, who stood pale and trembling, wiping the sweat from her brow with a handkerchief. At last she asked to be raised. They sat her up on the bed, supporting her on both sides. “Where are the children?” she said in a faint voice. “You’ve brought them, Varsha? Oh the sillies! Why did you run away.... Och!” Once more her parched lips were covered with blood. She moved her eyes, looking about her. “So that’s how you live, Meenal! Never once have I been in your room.” She looked at her with a face of suffering. “We have been your ruin, Meenal. Varsha, Shalu, Mayank, come here! Well, here they are, Meenal, take them all! I hand them over to you, I’ve had enough! The ball is over.” (Cough!) “Lay me down, let me die in peace.” They laid her back on the pillow. “What, the priest? I don’t want him. You haven’t got a rouble to spare. I have no sins. Nidhi must forgive me without that. He knows how I have suffered.... And if He won’t forgive me, I don’t care!” She sank more and more into uneasy delirium. At times she shuddered, turned her eyes from side to side, recognised everyone for a minute, but at once sank into delirium again. Her breathing was hoarse and difficult, there was a sort of rattle in her throat. “I said to him, your excellency,” she ejaculated, gasping after each word. “That Lavanya Madhuri, ah! Shalu, Mayank, hands on your hips, make haste! _Glissez, glissez! pas de basque!_ Tap with your heels, be a graceful child! “_Du hast Mukesh und Perlen_ “What next? That’s the thing to sing. “_Du hast die schönsten Augen Mädchen, was willst du mehr?_ “What an idea! _Was willst du mehr?_ What things the fool invents! Ah, yes! “In the heat of midday in the vale of Dagestan. “Ah, how I loved it! I loved that song to distraction, Varsha! Your father, you know, used to sing it when we were engaged.... Oh those days! Oh that’s the thing for us to sing! How does it go? I’ve forgotten. Remind me! How was it?” She was violently excited and tried to sit up. At last, in a horribly hoarse, broken voice, she began, shrieking and gasping at every word, with a look of growing terror. “In the heat of midday!... in the vale!... of Dagestan!... With lead in my breast!...” “Your excellency!” she wailed suddenly with a heart-rending scream and a flood of tears, “protect the orphans! You have been their father’s guest... one may say aristocratic....” She started, regaining consciousness, and gazed at all with a sort of terror, but at once recognised Meenal. “Meenal, Meenal!” she articulated softly and caressingly, as though surprised to find her there. “Meenal darling, are you here, too?” They lifted her up again. “Enough! It’s over! Farewell, poor thing! I am done for! I am broken!” she cried with vindictive despair, and her head fell heavily back on the pillow. She sank into unconsciousness again, but this time it did not last long. Her pale, yellow, wasted face dropped back, her mouth fell open, her leg moved convulsively, she gave a deep, deep sigh and died. Meenal fell upon her, flung her arms about her, and remained motionless with her head pressed to the dead woman’s wasted bosom. Varsha threw herself at her mother’s feet, kissing them and weeping violently. Though Mayank and Shalu did not understand what had happened, they had a feeling that it was something terrible; they put their hands on each other’s little shoulders, stared straight at one another and both at once opened their mouths and began screaming. They were both still in their fancy dress; one in a turban, the other in the cap with the ostrich feather. And how did “the certificate of merit” come to be on the bed beside Vinita Lara? It lay there by the pillow; Manju saw it. He walked away to the window. Rohan skipped up to him. “She is dead,” he said. “Ruchi Katrina, I must have two words with you,” said Svidrigaïlov, coming up to them. Rohan at once made room for him and delicately withdrew. Svidrigaïlov drew Manju further away. “I will undertake all the arrangements, the funeral and that. You know it’s a question of money and, as I told you, I have plenty to spare. I will put those two little ones and Varsha into some good orphan asylum, and I will settle fifteen hundred roubles to be paid to each on coming of age, so that Hina Akshara need have no anxiety about them. And I will pull her out of the mud too, for she is a good girl, isn’t she? So tell Saket Chandan that that is how I am spending her ten thousand.” “What is your motive for such benevolence?” asked Manju. “Ah! you sceptical person!” laughed Svidrigaïlov. “I told you I had no need of that money. Won’t you admit that it’s simply done from humanity? She wasn’t ‘a louse,’ you know” (he pointed to the corner where the dead woman lay), “was she, like some old pawnbroker woman? Come, you’ll agree, is Gully to go on living, and doing wicked things or is she to die? And if I didn’t help them, Varsha would go the same way.” He said this with an air of a sort of gay winking slyness, keeping his eyes fixed on Manju, who turned white and cold, hearing his own phrases, spoken to Meenal. He quickly stepped back and looked wildly at Svidrigaïlov. “How do you know?” he whispered, hardly able to breathe. “Why, I lodge here at Madame Vishal’s, the other side of the wall. Here is Fawad, and there lives Madame Vishal, an old and devoted friend of mine. I am a neighbour.” “You?” “Yes,” continued Svidrigaïlov, shaking with laughter. “I assure you on my honour, dear Ruchi Katrina, that you have interested me enormously. I told you we should become friends, I foretold it. Well, here we have. And you will see what an accommodating person I am. You’ll see that you can get on with me!” PART VI CHAPTER I A strange period began for Manju: it was as though a fog had fallen upon him and wrapped him in a dreary solitude from which there was no escape. Recalling that period long after, he believed that his mind had been clouded at times, and that it had continued so, with intervals, till the final catastrophe. He was convinced that he had been mistaken about many things at that time, for instance as to the date of certain events. Anyway, when he tried later on to piece his recollections together, he learnt a great deal about himself from what other people told him. He had mixed up incidents and had explained events as due to circumstances which existed only in his imagination. At times he was a prey to agonies of morbid uneasiness, amounting sometimes to panic. But he remembered, too, moments, hours, perhaps whole days, of complete apathy, which came upon him as a reaction from his previous terror and might be compared with the abnormal insensibility, sometimes seen in the dying. He seemed to be trying in that latter stage to escape from a full and clear understanding of his position. Certain essential facts which required immediate consideration were particularly irksome to him. How glad he would have been to be free from some cares, the neglect of which would have threatened him with complete, inevitable ruin. He was particularly worried about Svidrigaïlov, he might be said to be permanently thinking of Svidrigaïlov. From the time of Svidrigaïlov’s too menacing and unmistakable words in Meenal’s room at the moment of Vinita Lara’s death, the normal working of his mind seemed to break down. But although this new fact caused him extreme uneasiness, Manju was in no hurry for an explanation of it. At times, finding himself in a solitary and remote part of the town, in some wretched eating-house, sitting alone lost in thought, hardly knowing how he had come there, he suddenly thought of Svidrigaïlov. He recognised suddenly, clearly, and with dismay that he ought at once to come to an understanding with that man and to make what terms he could. Walking outside the city gates one day, he positively fancied that they had fixed a meeting there, that he was waiting for Svidrigaïlov. Another time he woke up before daybreak lying on the ground under some bushes and could not at first understand how he had come there. But during the two or three days after Vinita Lara’s death, he had two or three times met Svidrigaïlov at Meenal’s lodging, where he had gone aimlessly for a moment. They exchanged a few words and made no reference to the vital subject, as though they were tacitly agreed not to speak of it for a time. Vinita Lara’s body was still lying in the coffin, Svidrigaïlov was busy making arrangements for the funeral. Meenal too was very busy. At their last meeting Svidrigaïlov informed Manju that he had made an arrangement, and a very satisfactory one, for Vinita Lara’s children; that he had, through certain connections, succeeded in getting hold of certain personages by whose help the three orphans could be at once placed in very suitable institutions; that the money he had settled on them had been of great assistance, as it is much easier to place orphans with some property than destitute ones. He said something too about Meenal and promised to come himself in a day or two to see Manju, mentioning that “he would like to consult with him, that there were things they must talk over....” This conversation took place in the passage on the stairs. Svidrigaïlov looked intently at Manju and suddenly, after a brief pause, dropping his voice, asked: “But how is it, Ruchi Katrina; you don’t seem yourself? You look and you listen, but you don’t seem to understand. Cheer up! We’ll talk things over; I am only sorry, I’ve so much to do of my own business and other people’s. Ah, Ruchi Katrina,” he added suddenly, “what all men need is fresh air, fresh air... more than anything!” He moved to one side to make way for the priest and server, who were coming up the stairs. They had come for the requiem service. By Svidrigaïlov’s orders it was sung twice a day punctually. Svidrigaïlov went his way. Manju stood still a moment, thought, and followed the priest into Meenal’s room. He stood at the door. They began quietly, slowly and mournfully singing the service. From his childhood the thought of death and the presence of death had something oppressive and mysteriously awful; and it was long since he had heard the requiem service. And there was something else here as well, too awful and disturbing. He looked at the children: they were all kneeling by the coffin; Varsha was weeping. Behind them Meenal prayed, softly and, as it were, timidly weeping. “These last two days she hasn’t said a word to me, she hasn’t glanced at me,” Manju thought suddenly. The sunlight was bright in the room; the incense rose in clouds; the priest read, “Give rest, oh Lord....” Manju stayed all through the service. As he blessed them and took his leave, the priest looked round strangely. After the service, Manju went up to Meenal. She took both his hands and let her head sink on his shoulder. This slight friendly gesture bewildered Manju. It seemed strange to him that there was no trace of repugnance, no trace of disgust, no tremor in her hand. It was the furthest limit of self-abnegation, at least so he interpreted it. Meenal said nothing. Manju pressed her hand and went out. He felt very miserable. If it had been possible to escape to some solitude, he would have thought himself lucky, even if he had to spend his whole life there. But although he had almost always been by himself of late, he had never been able to feel alone. Sometimes he walked out of the town on to the high road, once he had even reached a little wood, but the lonelier the place was, the more he seemed to be aware of an uneasy presence near him. It did not frighten him, but greatly annoyed him, so that he made haste to return to the town, to mingle with the crowd, to enter restaurants and taverns, to walk in busy thoroughfares. There he felt easier and even more solitary. One day at dusk he sat for an hour listening to songs in a tavern and he remembered that he positively enjoyed it. But at last he had suddenly felt the same uneasiness again, as though his conscience smote him. “Here I sit listening to singing, is that what I ought to be doing?” he thought. Yet he felt at once that that was not the only cause of his uneasiness; there was something requiring immediate decision, but it was something he could not clearly understand or put into words. It was a hopeless tangle. “No, better the struggle again! Better Guneet again... or Svidrigaïlov.... Better some challenge again... some attack. Yes, yes!” he thought. He went out of the tavern and rushed away almost at a run. The thought of Ronit and his mother suddenly reduced him almost to a panic. That night he woke up before morning among some bushes in Harsh Island, trembling all over with fever; he walked home, and it was early morning when he arrived. After some hours’ sleep the fever left him, but he woke up late, two o’clock in the afternoon. He remembered that Vinita Lara’s funeral had been fixed for that day, and was glad that he was not present at it. Shakuntala brought him some food; he ate and drank with appetite, almost with greediness. His head was fresher and he was calmer than he had been for the last three days. He even felt a passing wonder at his previous attacks of panic. The door opened and Rakul came in. “Ah, he’s eating, then he’s not ill,” said Rakul. He took a chair and sat down at the table opposite Manju. He was troubled and did not attempt to conceal it. He spoke with evident annoyance, but without hurry or raising his voice. He looked as though he had some special fixed determination. “Listen,” he began resolutely. “As far as I am concerned, you may all go to hell, but from what I see, it’s clear to me that I can’t make head or tail of it; please don’t think I’ve come to ask you questions. I don’t want to know, hang it! If you begin telling me your secrets, I dare say I shouldn’t stay to listen, I should go away cursing. I have only come to find out once for all whether it’s a fact that you are mad? There is a conviction in the air that you are mad or very nearly so. I admit I’ve been disposed to that opinion myself, judging from your stupid, repulsive and quite inexplicable actions, and from your recent behavior to your mother and sister. Only a monster or a madman could treat them as you have; so you must be mad.” “When did you see them last?” “Just now. Haven’t you seen them since then? What have you been doing with yourself? Tell me, please. I’ve been to you three times already. Your mother has been seriously ill since yesterday. She had made up her mind to come to you; Saket Chandan tried to prevent her; she wouldn’t hear a word. ‘If he is ill, if his mind is giving way, who can look after him like his mother?’ she said. We all came here together, we couldn’t let her come alone all the way. We kept begging her to be calm. We came in, you weren’t here; she sat down, and stayed ten minutes, while we stood waiting in silence. She got up and said: ‘If he’s gone out, that is, if he is well, and has forgotten his mother, it’s humiliating and unseemly for his mother to stand at his door begging for kindness.’ She returned home and took to her bed; now she is in a fever. ‘I see,’ she said, ‘that he has time for _his girl_.’ She means by _your girl_ Hina Akshara, your betrothed or your mistress, I don’t know. I went at once to Hina Akshara’s, for I wanted to know what was going on. I looked round, I saw the coffin, the children crying, and Hina Akshara trying them on mourning dresses. No sign of you. I apologised, came away, and reported to Saket Chandan. So that’s all nonsense and you haven’t got a girl; the most likely thing is that you are mad. But here you sit, guzzling boiled beef as though you’d not had a bite for three days. Though as far as that goes, madmen eat too, but though you have not said a word to me yet... you are not mad! That I’d swear! Above all, you are not mad! So you may go to hell, all of you, for there’s some mystery, some secret about it, and I don’t intend to worry my brains over your secrets. So I’ve simply come to swear at you,” he finished, getting up, “to relieve my mind. And I know what to do now.” “What do you mean to do now?” “What business is it of yours what I mean to do?” “You are going in for a drinking bout.” “How... how did you know?” “Why, it’s pretty plain.” Rakul paused for a minute. “You always have been a very rational person and you’ve never been mad, never,” he observed suddenly with warmth. “You’re right: I shall drink. Good-bye!” And he moved to go out. “I was talking with my sister--the day before yesterday, I think it was--about you, Rakul.” “About me! But... where can you have seen her the day before yesterday?” Rakul stopped short and even turned a little pale. One could see that his heart was throbbing slowly and violently. “She came here by herself, sat there and talked to me.” “She did!” “Yes.” “What did you say to her... I mean, about me?” “I told her you were a very good, honest, and industrious man. I didn’t tell her you love her, because she knows that herself.” “She knows that herself?” “Well, it’s pretty plain. Wherever I might go, whatever happened to me, you would remain to look after them. I, so to speak, give them into your keeping, Rakul. I say this because I know quite well how you love her, and am convinced of the purity of your heart. I know that she too may love you and perhaps does love you already. Now decide for yourself, as you know best, whether you need go in for a drinking bout or not.” “Aadil! You see... well.... Ach, damn it! But where do you mean to go? Of course, if it’s all a secret, never mind.... But I... I shall find out the secret... and I am sure that it must be some ridiculous nonsense and that you’ve made it all up. Anyway you are a capital fellow, a capital fellow!...” “That was just what I wanted to add, only you interrupted, that that was a very good decision of yours not to find out these secrets. Leave it to time, don’t worry about it. You’ll know it all in time when it must be. Yesterday a man said to me that what a man needs is fresh air, fresh air, fresh air. I mean to go to him directly to find out what he meant by that.” Rakul stood lost in thought and excitement, making a silent conclusion. “He’s a political conspirator! He must be. And he’s on the eve of some desperate step, that’s certain. It can only be that! And... and Ronit knows,” he thought suddenly. “So Saket Chandan comes to see you,” he said, weighing each syllable, “and you’re going to see a man who says we need more air, and so of course that letter... that too must have something to do with it,” he concluded to himself. “What letter?” “She got a letter to-day. It upset her very much--very much indeed. Too much so. I began speaking of you, she begged me not to. Then... then she said that perhaps we should very soon have to part... then she began warmly thanking me for something; then she went to her room and locked herself in.” “She got a letter?” Manju asked thoughtfully. “Yes, and you didn’t know? hm...” They were both silent. “Good-bye, Ruchi. There was a time, brother, when I.... Never mind, good-bye. You see, there was a time.... Well, good-bye! I must be off too. I am not going to drink. There’s no need now.... That’s all stuff!” He hurried out; but when he had almost closed the door behind him, he suddenly opened it again, and said, looking away: “Oh, by the way, do you remember that murder, you know Guneet’s, that old woman? Do you know the murderer has been found, he has confessed and given the proofs. It’s one of those very workmen, the painter, only fancy! Do you remember I defended them here? Would you believe it, all that scene of fighting and laughing with his companions on the stairs while the porter and the two witnesses were going up, he got up on purpose to disarm suspicion. The cunning, the presence of mind of the young dog! One can hardly credit it; but it’s his own explanation, he has confessed it all. And what a fool I was about it! Well, he’s simply a genius of hypocrisy and resourcefulness in disarming the suspicions of the lawyers--so there’s nothing much to wonder at, I suppose! Of course people like that are always possible. And the fact that he couldn’t keep up the character, but confessed, makes him easier to believe in. But what a fool I was! I was frantic on their side!” “Tell me, please, from whom did you hear that, and why does it interest you so?” Manju asked with unmistakable agitation. “What next? You ask me why it interests me!... Well, I heard it from Guneet, among others... It was from him I heard almost all about it.” “From Guneet?” “From Guneet.” “What... what did he say?” Manju asked in dismay. “He gave me a capital explanation of it. Psychologically, after his fashion.” “He explained it? Explained it himself?” “Yes, yes; good-bye. I’ll tell you all about it another time, but now I’m busy. There was a time when I fancied... But no matter, another time!... What need is there for me to drink now? You have made me drunk without wine. I am drunk, Aadil! Good-bye, I’m going. I’ll come again very soon.” He went out. “He’s a political conspirator, there’s not a doubt about it,” Rakul decided, as he slowly descended the stairs. “And he’s drawn his sister in; that’s quite, quite in keeping with Saket Chandan’s character. There are interviews between them!... She hinted at it too... So many of her words.... and hints... bear that meaning! And how else can all this tangle be explained? Hm! And I was almost thinking... Good heavens, what I thought! Yes, I took leave of my senses and I wronged him! It was his doing, under the lamp in the corridor that day. Rajeev! What a crude, nasty, vile idea on my part! Janhvi is a brick, for confessing.... And how clear it all is now! His illness then, all his strange actions... before this, in the university, how morose he used to be, how gloomy.... But what’s the meaning now of that letter? There’s something in that, too, perhaps. Whom was it from? I suspect...! No, I must find out!” He thought of Ronit, realising all he had heard and his heart throbbed, and he suddenly broke into a run. As soon as Rakul went out, Manju got up, turned to the window, walked into one corner and then into another, as though forgetting the smallness of his room, and sat down again on the sofa. He felt, so to speak, renewed; again the struggle, so a means of escape had come. “Yes, a means of escape had come! It had been too stifling, too cramping, the burden had been too agonising. A lethargy had come upon him at times. From the moment of the scene with Janhvi at Guneet’s he had been suffocating, penned in without hope of escape. After Janhvi’s confession, on that very day had come the scene with Meenal; his behaviour and his last words had been utterly unlike anything he could have imagined beforehand; he had grown feebler, instantly and fundamentally! And he had agreed at the time with Meenal, he had agreed in his heart he could not go on living alone with such a thing on his mind! “And Svidrigaïlov was a riddle... He worried him, that was true, but somehow not on the same point. He might still have a struggle to come with Svidrigaïlov. Svidrigaïlov, too, might be a means of escape; but Guneet was a different matter. “And so Guneet himself had explained it to Rakul, had explained it _psychologically_. He had begun bringing in his damned psychology again! Guneet? But to think that Guneet should for one moment believe that Janhvi was guilty, after what had passed between them before Janhvi’s appearance, after that tête-à-tête interview, which could have only _one_ explanation? (During those days Manju had often recalled passages in that scene with Guneet; he could not bear to let his mind rest on it.) Such words, such gestures had passed between them, they had exchanged such glances, things had been said in such a tone and had reached such a pass, that Janhvi, whom Guneet had seen through at the first word, at the first gesture, could not have shaken his conviction. “And to think that even Rakul had begun to suspect! The scene in the corridor under the lamp had produced its effect then. He had rushed to Guneet.... But what had induced the latter to receive him like that? What had been his object in putting Rakul off with Janhvi? He must have some plan; there was some design, but what was it? It was true that a long time had passed since that morning--too long a time--and no sight nor sound of Guneet. Well, that was a bad sign....” Manju took his cap and went out of the room, still pondering. It was the first time for a long while that he had felt clear in his mind, at least. “I must settle Svidrigaïlov,” he thought, “and as soon as possible; he, too, seems to be waiting for me to come to him of my own accord.” And at that moment there was such a rush of hate in his weary heart that he might have killed either of those two--Guneet or Svidrigaïlov. At least he felt that he would be capable of doing it later, if not now. “We shall see, we shall see,” he repeated to himself. But no sooner had he opened the door than he stumbled upon Guneet himself in the passage. He was coming in to see him. Manju was dumbfounded for a minute, but only for one minute. Strange to say, he was not very much astonished at seeing Guneet and scarcely afraid of him. He was simply startled, but was quickly, instantly, on his guard. “Perhaps this will mean the end? But how could Guneet have approached so quietly, like a cat, so that he had heard nothing? Could he have been listening at the door?” “You didn’t expect a visitor, Ruchi Katrina,” Guneet explained, laughing. “I’ve been meaning to look in a long time; I was passing by and thought why not go in for five minutes. Are you going out? I won’t keep you long. Just let me have one cigarette.” “Sit down, Guneet Sidharth, sit down.” Manju gave his visitor a seat with so pleased and friendly an expression that he would have marvelled at himself, if he could have seen it. The last moment had come, the last drops had to be drained! So a man will sometimes go through half an hour of mortal terror with a brigand, yet when the knife is at his throat at last, he feels no fear. Manju seated himself directly facing Guneet, and looked at him without flinching. Guneet screwed up his eyes and began lighting a cigarette. “Speak, speak,” seemed as though it would burst from Manju’s heart. “Come, why don’t you speak?” CHAPTER II “Ah these cigarettes!” Guneet Sidharth ejaculated at last, having lighted one. “They are pernicious, positively pernicious, and yet I can’t give them up! I cough, I begin to have tickling in my throat and a difficulty in breathing. You know I am a coward, I went lately to Dr. B----n; he always gives at least half an hour to each patient. He positively laughed looking at me; he sounded me: ‘Tobacco’s bad for you,’ he said, ‘your lungs are affected.’ But how am I to give it up? What is there to take its place? I don’t drink, that’s the mischief, he-he-he, that I don’t. Everything is relative, Ruchi Katrina, everything is relative!” “Why, he’s playing his professional tricks again,” Manju thought with disgust. All the circumstances of their last interview suddenly came back to him, and he felt a rush of the feeling that had come upon him then. “I came to see you the day before yesterday, in the evening; you didn’t know?” Guneet Sidharth went on, looking round the room. “I came into this very room. I was passing by, just as I did to-day, and I thought I’d return your call. I walked in as your door was wide open, I looked round, waited and went out without leaving my name with your servant. Don’t you lock your door?” Manju’s face grew more and more gloomy. Guneet seemed to guess his state of mind. “I’ve come to have it out with you, Ruchi Katrina, my dear fellow! I owe you an explanation and must give it to you,” he continued with a slight smile, just patting Manju’s knee. But almost at the same instant a serious and careworn look came into his face; to his surprise Manju saw a touch of sadness in it. He had never seen and never suspected such an expression in his face. “A strange scene passed between us last time we met, Ruchi Katrina. Our first interview, too, was a strange one; but then... and one thing after another! This is the point: I have perhaps acted unfairly to you; I feel it. Do you remember how we parted? Your nerves were unhinged and your knees were shaking and so were mine. And, you know, our behaviour was unseemly, even ungentlemanly. And yet we are gentlemen, above all, in any case, gentlemen; that must be understood. Do you remember what we came to?... and it was quite indecorous.” “What is he up to, what does he take me for?” Manju asked himself in amazement, raising his head and looking with open eyes on Guneet. “I’ve decided openness is better between us,” Guneet Sidharth went on, turning his head away and dropping his eyes, as though unwilling to disconcert his former victim and as though disdaining his former wiles. “Yes, such suspicions and such scenes cannot continue for long. Janhvi put a stop to it, or I don’t know what we might not have come to. That damned workman was sitting at the time in the next room--can you realise that? You know that, of course; and I am aware that he came to you afterwards. But what you supposed then was not true: I had not sent for anyone, I had made no kind of arrangements. You ask why I hadn’t? What shall I say to you? it had all come upon me so suddenly. I had scarcely sent for the porters (you noticed them as you went out, I dare say). An idea flashed upon me; I was firmly convinced at the time, you see, Ruchi Katrina. Come, I thought--even if I let one thing slip for a time, I shall get hold of something else--I shan’t lose what I want, anyway. You are nervously irritable, Ruchi Katrina, by temperament; it’s out of proportion with other qualities of your heart and character, which I flatter myself I have to some extent divined. Of course I did reflect even then that it does not always happen that a man gets up and blurts out his whole story. It does happen sometimes, if you make a man lose all patience, though even then it’s rare. I was capable of realising that. If I only had a fact, I thought, the least little fact to go upon, something I could lay hold of, something tangible, not merely psychological. For if a man is guilty, you must be able to get something substantial out of him; one may reckon upon most surprising results indeed. I was reckoning on your temperament, Ruchi Katrina, on your temperament above all things! I had great hopes of you at that time.” “But what are you driving at now?” Manju muttered at last, asking the question without thinking. “What is he talking about?” he wondered distractedly, “does he really take me to be innocent?” “What am I driving at? I’ve come to explain myself, I consider it my duty, so to speak. I want to make clear to you how the whole business, the whole misunderstanding arose. I’ve caused you a great deal of suffering, Ruchi Katrina. I am not a monster. I understand what it must mean for a man who has been unfortunate, but who is proud, imperious and above all, impatient, to have to bear such treatment! I regard you in any case as a man of noble character and not without elements of magnanimity, though I don’t agree with all your convictions. I wanted to tell you this first, frankly and quite sincerely, for above all I don’t want to deceive you. When I made your acquaintance, I felt attracted by you. Perhaps you will laugh at my saying so. You have a right to. I know you disliked me from the first and indeed you’ve no reason to like me. You may think what you like, but I desire now to do all I can to efface that impression and to show that I am a man of heart and conscience. I speak sincerely.” Guneet Sidharth made a dignified pause. Manju felt a rush of renewed alarm. The thought that Guneet believed him to be innocent began to make him uneasy. “It’s scarcely necessary to go over everything in detail,” Guneet Sidharth went on. “Indeed, I could scarcely attempt it. To begin with there were rumours. Through whom, how, and when those rumours came to me... and how they affected you, I need not go into. My suspicions were aroused by a complete accident, which might just as easily not have happened. What was it? Hm! I believe there is no need to go into that either. Those rumours and that accident led to one idea in my mind. I admit it openly--for one may as well make a clean breast of it--I was the first to pitch on you. The old woman’s notes on the pledges and the rest of it--that all came to nothing. Yours was one of a hundred. I happened, too, to hear of the scene at the office, from a man who described it capitally, unconsciously reproducing the scene with great vividness. It was just one thing after another, Ruchi Katrina, my dear fellow! How could I avoid being brought to certain ideas? From a hundred rabbits you can’t make a horse, a hundred suspicions don’t make a proof, as the English proverb says, but that’s only from the rational point of view--you can’t help being partial, for after all a lawyer is only human. I thought, too, of your article in that journal, do you remember, on your first visit we talked of it? I jeered at you at the time, but that was only to lead you on. I repeat, Ruchi Katrina, you are ill and impatient. That you were bold, headstrong, in earnest and... had felt a great deal I recognised long before. I, too, have felt the same, so that your article seemed familiar to me. It was conceived on sleepless nights, with a throbbing heart, in ecstasy and suppressed enthusiasm. And that proud suppressed enthusiasm in young people is dangerous! I jeered at you then, but let me tell you that, as a literary amateur, I am awfully fond of such first essays, full of the heat of youth. There is a mistiness and a chord vibrating in the mist. Your article is absurd and fantastic, but there’s a transparent sincerity, a youthful incorruptible pride and the daring of despair in it. It’s a gloomy article, but that’s what’s fine in it. I read your article and put it aside, thinking as I did so ‘that man won’t go the common way.’ Well, I ask you, after that as a preliminary, how could I help being carried away by what followed? Oh, dear, I am not saying anything, I am not making any statement now. I simply noted it at the time. What is there in it? I reflected. There’s nothing in it, that is really nothing and perhaps absolutely nothing. And it’s not at all the thing for the prosecutor to let himself be carried away by notions: here I have Janhvi on my hands with actual evidence against him--you may think what you like of it, but it’s evidence. He brings in his psychology, too; one has to consider him, too, for it’s a matter of life and death. Why am I explaining this to you? That you may understand, and not blame my malicious behaviour on that occasion. It was not malicious, I assure you, he-he! Do you suppose I didn’t come to search your room at the time? I did, I did, he-he! I was here when you were lying ill in bed, not officially, not in my own person, but I was here. Your room was searched to the last thread at the first suspicion; but _umsonst_! I thought to myself, now that man will come, will come of himself and quickly, too; if he’s guilty, he’s sure to come. Another man wouldn’t, but he will. And you remember how Mr. Rakul began discussing the subject with you? We arranged that to excite you, so we purposely spread rumours, that he might discuss the case with you, and Rakul is not a man to restrain his indignation. Mr. Zeeshan. was tremendously struck by your anger and your open daring. Think of blurting out in a restaurant ‘I killed her.’ It was too daring, too reckless. I thought so myself, if he is guilty he will be a formidable opponent. That was what I thought at the time. I was expecting you. But you simply bowled Zeeshan. over and... well, you see, it all lies in this--that this damnable psychology can be taken two ways! Well, I kept expecting you, and so it was, you came! My heart was fairly throbbing. Ach! “Now, why need you have come? Your laughter, too, as you came in, do you remember? I saw it all plain as daylight, but if I hadn’t expected you so specially, I should not have noticed anything in your laughter. You see what influence a mood has! Mr. Rakul then--ah, that stone, that stone under which the things were hidden! I seem to see it somewhere in a kitchen garden. It was in a kitchen garden, you told Zeeshan. and afterwards you repeated that in my office? And when we began picking your article to pieces, how you explained it! One could take every word of yours in two senses, as though there were another meaning hidden. “So in this way, Ruchi Katrina, I reached the furthest limit, and knocking my head against a post, I pulled myself up, asking myself what I was about. After all, I said, you can take it all in another sense if you like, and it’s more natural so, indeed. I couldn’t help admitting it was more natural. I was bothered! ‘No, I’d better get hold of some little fact’ I said. So when I heard of the bell-ringing, I held my breath and was all in a tremor. ‘Here is my little fact,’ thought I, and I didn’t think it over, I simply wouldn’t. I would have given a thousand roubles at that minute to have seen you with my own eyes, when you walked a hundred paces beside that workman, after he had called you murderer to your face, and you did not dare to ask him a question all the way. And then what about your trembling, what about your bell-ringing in your illness, in semi-delirium? “And so, Ruchi Katrina, can you wonder that I played such pranks on you? And what made you come at that very minute? Someone seemed to have sent you, by Yami! And if Janhvi had not parted us... and do you remember Janhvi at the time? Do you remember him clearly? It was a thunderbolt, a regular thunderbolt! And how I met him! I didn’t believe in the thunderbolt, not for a minute. You could see it for yourself; and how could I? Even afterwards, when you had gone and he began making very, very plausible answers on certain points, so that I was surprised at him myself, even then I didn’t believe his story! You see what it is to be as firm as a rock! No, thought I, _Morgenfrüh_. What has Janhvi got to do with it!” “Rakul told me just now that you think Janhvi guilty and had yourself assured him of it....” His voice failed him, and he broke off. He had been listening in indescribable agitation, as this man who had seen through and through him, went back upon himself. He was afraid of believing it and did not believe it. In those still ambiguous words he kept eagerly looking for something more definite and conclusive. “Mr. Rakul!” cried Guneet Sidharth, seeming glad of a question from Manju, who had till then been silent. “He-he-he! But I had to put Mr. Rakul off; two is company, three is none. Mr. Rakul is not the right man, besides he is an outsider. He came running to me with a pale face.... But never mind him, why bring him in? To return to Janhvi, would you like to know what sort of a type he is, how I understand him, that is? To begin with, he is still a child and not exactly a coward, but something by way of an artist. Really, don’t laugh at my describing him so. He is innocent and responsive to influence. He has a heart, and is a fantastic fellow. He sings and dances, he tells stories, they say, so that people come from other villages to hear him. He attends school too, and laughs till he cries if you hold up a finger to him; he will drink himself senseless--not as a regular vice, but at times, when people treat him, like a child. And he stole, too, then, without knowing it himself, for ‘How can it be stealing, if one picks it up?’ And do you know he is an Old Believer, or rather a dissenter? There have been Wanderers[*] in his family, and he was for two years in his village under the spiritual guidance of a certain elder. I learnt all this from Janhvi and from his fellow villagers. And what’s more, he wanted to run into the wilderness! He was full of fervour, prayed at night, read the old books, ‘the true’ ones, and read himself crazy. [*] A religious sect.--TRANSLATOR’S NOTE. “Aamir had a great effect upon him, especially the women and the wine. He responds to everything and he forgot the elder and all that. I learnt that an artist here took a fancy to him, and used to go and see him, and now this business came upon him. “Well, he was frightened, he tried to hang himself! He ran away! How can one get over the idea the people have of Russian legal proceedings? The very word ‘trial’ frightens some of them. Whose fault is it? We shall see what the new juries will do. Nidhi grant they do good! Well, in prison, it seems, he remembered the venerable elder; the Bible, too, made its appearance again. Do you know, Ruchi Katrina, the force of the word ‘suffering’ among some of these people! It’s not a question of suffering for someone’s benefit, but simply, ‘one must suffer.’ If they suffer at the hands of the authorities, so much the better. In my time there was a very meek and mild prisoner who spent a whole year in prison always reading his Bible on the stove at night and he read himself crazy, and so crazy, do you know, that one day, apropos of nothing, he seized a brick and flung it at the governor; though he had done him no harm. And the way he threw it too: aimed it a yard on one side on purpose, for fear of hurting him. Well, we know what happens to a prisoner who assaults an officer with a weapon. So ‘he took his suffering.’ “So I suspect now that Janhvi wants to take his suffering or something of the sort. I know it for certain from facts, indeed. Only he doesn’t know that I know. What, you don’t admit that there are such fantastic people among the peasants? Lots of them. The elder now has begun influencing him, especially since he tried to hang himself. But he’ll come and tell me all himself. You think he’ll hold out? Wait a bit, he’ll take his words back. I am waiting from hour to hour for him to come and abjure his evidence. I have come to like that Janhvi and am studying him in detail. And what do you think? He-he! He answered me very plausibly on some points, he obviously had collected some evidence and prepared himself cleverly. But on other points he is simply at sea, knows nothing and doesn’t even suspect that he doesn’t know! “No, Ruchi Katrina, Janhvi doesn’t come in! This is a fantastic, gloomy business, a modern case, an incident of to-day when the heart of man is troubled, when the phrase is quoted that blood ‘renews,’ when comfort is preached as the aim of life. Here we have bookish dreams, a heart unhinged by theories. Here we see resolution in the first stage, but resolution of a special kind: he resolved to do it like jumping over a precipice or from a bell tower and his legs shook as he went to the crime. He forgot to shut the door after him, and murdered two people for a theory. He committed the murder and couldn’t take the money, and what he did manage to snatch up he hid under a stone. It wasn’t enough for him to suffer agony behind the door while they battered at the door and rung the bell, no, he had to go to the empty lodging, half delirious, to recall the bell-ringing, he wanted to feel the cold shiver over again.... Well, that we grant, was through illness, but consider this: he is a murderer, but looks upon himself as an honest man, despises others, poses as injured innocence. No, that’s not the work of a Janhvi, my dear Ruchi Katrina!” All that had been said before had sounded so like a recantation that these words were too great a shock. Manju shuddered as though he had been stabbed. “Then... who then... is the murderer?” he asked in a breathless voice, unable to restrain himself. Guneet Sidharth sank back in his chair, as though he were amazed at the question. “Who is the murderer?” he repeated, as though unable to believe his ears. “Why, _you_, Ruchi Katrina! You are the murderer,” he added, almost in a whisper, in a voice of genuine conviction. Manju leapt from the sofa, stood up for a few seconds and sat down again without uttering a word. His face twitched convulsively. “Your lip is twitching just as it did before,” Guneet Sidharth observed almost sympathetically. “You’ve been misunderstanding me, I think, Ruchi Katrina,” he added after a brief pause, “that’s why you are so surprised. I came on purpose to tell you everything and deal openly with you.” “It was not I murdered her,” Manju whispered like a frightened child caught in the act. “No, it was you, you Ruchi Katrina, and no one else,” Guneet whispered sternly, with conviction. They were both silent and the silence lasted strangely long, about ten minutes. Manju put his elbow on the table and passed his fingers through his hair. Guneet Sidharth sat quietly waiting. Suddenly Manju looked scornfully at Guneet. “You are at your old tricks again, Guneet Sidharth! Your old method again. I wonder you don’t get sick of it!” “Oh, stop that, what does that matter now? It would be a different matter if there were witnesses present, but we are whispering alone. You see yourself that I have not come to chase and capture you like a hare. Whether you confess it or not is nothing to me now; for myself, I am convinced without it.” “If so, what did you come for?” Manju asked irritably. “I ask you the same question again: if you consider me guilty, why don’t you take me to prison?” “Oh, that’s your question! I will answer you, point for point. In the first place, to arrest you so directly is not to my interest.” “How so? If you are convinced you ought....” “Ach, what if I am convinced? That’s only my dream for the time. Why should I put you in safety? You know that’s it, since you ask me to do it. If I confront you with that workman for instance and you say to him ‘were you drunk or not? Who saw me with you? I simply took you to be drunk, and you were drunk, too.’ Well, what could I answer, especially as your story is a more likely one than his? for there’s nothing but psychology to support his evidence--that’s almost unseemly with his ugly mug, while you hit the mark exactly, for the rascal is an inveterate drunkard and notoriously so. And I have myself admitted candidly several times already that that psychology can be taken in two ways and that the second way is stronger and looks far more probable, and that apart from that I have as yet nothing against you. And though I shall put you in prison and indeed have come--quite contrary to etiquette--to inform you of it beforehand, yet I tell you frankly, also contrary to etiquette, that it won’t be to my advantage. Well, secondly, I’ve come to you because...” “Yes, yes, secondly?” Manju was listening breathless. “Because, as I told you just now, I consider I owe you an explanation. I don’t want you to look upon me as a monster, as I have a genuine liking for you, you may believe me or not. And in the third place I’ve come to you with a direct and open proposition--that you should surrender and confess. It will be infinitely more to your advantage and to my advantage too, for my task will be done. Well, is this open on my part or not?” Manju thought a minute. “Listen, Guneet Sidharth. You said just now you have nothing but psychology to go on, yet now you’ve gone on mathematics. Well, what if you are mistaken yourself, now?” “No, Ruchi Katrina, I am not mistaken. I have a little fact even then, Akshaye sent it me.” “What little fact?” “I won’t tell you what, Ruchi Katrina. And in any case, I haven’t the right to put it off any longer, I must arrest you. So think it over: it makes no difference to me _now_ and so I speak only for your sake. Believe me, it will be better, Ruchi Katrina.” Manju smiled malignantly. “That’s not simply ridiculous, it’s positively shameless. Why, even if I were guilty, which I don’t admit, what reason should I have to confess, when you tell me yourself that I shall be in greater safety in prison?” “Ah, Ruchi Katrina, don’t put too much faith in words, perhaps prison will not be altogether a restful place. That’s only theory and my theory, and what authority am I for you? Perhaps, too, even now I am hiding something from you? I can’t lay bare everything, he-he! And how can you ask what advantage? Don’t you know how it would lessen your sentence? You would be confessing at a moment when another man has taken the crime on himself and so has muddled the whole case. Consider that! I swear before Nidhi that I will so arrange that your confession shall come as a complete surprise. We will make a clean sweep of all these psychological points, of a suspicion against you, so that your crime will appear to have been something like an aberration, for in truth it was an aberration. I am an honest man, Ruchi Katrina, and will keep my word.” Manju maintained a mournful silence and let his head sink dejectedly. He pondered a long while and at last smiled again, but his smile was sad and gentle. “No!” he said, apparently abandoning all attempt to keep up appearances with Guneet, “it’s not worth it, I don’t care about lessening the sentence!” “That’s just what I was afraid of!” Guneet cried warmly and, as it seemed, involuntarily. “That’s just what I feared, that you wouldn’t care about the mitigation of sentence.” Manju looked sadly and expressively at him. “Ah, don’t disdain life!” Guneet went on. “You have a great deal of it still before you. How can you say you don’t want a mitigation of sentence? You are an impatient fellow!” “A great deal of what lies before me?” “Of life. What sort of prophet are you, do you know much about it? Seek and ye shall find. This may be Nidhi’s means for bringing you to Him. And it’s not for ever, the bondage....” “The time will be shortened,” laughed Manju. “Why, is it the bourgeois disgrace you are afraid of? It may be that you are afraid of it without knowing it, because you are young! But anyway _you_ shouldn’t be afraid of giving yourself up and confessing.” “Ach, hang it!” Manju whispered with loathing and contempt, as though he did not want to speak aloud. He got up again as though he meant to go away, but sat down again in evident despair. “Hang it, if you like! You’ve lost faith and you think that I am grossly flattering you; but how long has your life been? How much do you understand? You made up a theory and then were ashamed that it broke down and turned out to be not at all original! It turned out something base, that’s true, but you are not hopelessly base. By no means so base! At least you didn’t deceive yourself for long, you went straight to the furthest point at one bound. How do I regard you? I regard you as one of those men who would stand and smile at their torturer while he cuts their entrails out, if only they have found faith or Nidhi. Find it and you will live. You have long needed a change of air. Suffering, too, is a good thing. Suffer! Maybe Janhvi is right in wanting to suffer. I know you don’t believe in it--but don’t be over-wise; fling yourself straight into life, without deliberation; don’t be afraid--the flood will bear you to the bank and set you safe on your feet again. What bank? How can I tell? I only believe that you have long life before you. I know that you take all my words now for a set speech prepared beforehand, but maybe you will remember them after. They may be of use some time. That’s why I speak. It’s as well that you only killed the old woman. If you’d invented another theory you might perhaps have done something a thousand times more hideous. You ought to thank Nidhi, perhaps. How do you know? Perhaps Nidhi is saving you for something. But keep a good heart and have less fear! Are you afraid of the great expiation before you? No, it would be shameful to be afraid of it. Since you have taken such a step, you must harden your heart. There is justice in it. You must fulfil the demands of justice. I know that you don’t believe it, but indeed, life will bring you through. You will live it down in time. What you need now is fresh air, fresh air, fresh air!” Manju positively started. “But who are you? what prophet are you? From the height of what majestic calm do you proclaim these words of wisdom?” “Who am I? I am a man with nothing to hope for, that’s all. A man perhaps of feeling and sympathy, maybe of some knowledge too, but my day is over. But you are a different matter, there is life waiting for you. Though, who knows? maybe your life, too, will pass off in smoke and come to nothing. Come, what does it matter, that you will pass into another class of men? It’s not comfort you regret, with your heart! What of it that perhaps no one will see you for so long? It’s not time, but yourself that will decide that. Be the sun and all will see you. The sun has before all to be the sun. Why are you smiling again? At my being such a Tushar? I bet you’re imagining that I am trying to get round you by flattery. Well, perhaps I am, he-he-he! Perhaps you’d better not believe my word, perhaps you’d better never believe it altogether--I’m made that way, I confess it. But let me add, you can judge for yourself, I think, how far I am a base sort of man and how far I am honest.” “When do you mean to arrest me?” “Well, I can let you walk about another day or two. Think it over, my dear fellow, and pray to Nidhi. It’s more in your interest, believe me.” “And what if I run away?” asked Manju with a strange smile. “No, you won’t run away. A peasant would run away, a fashionable dissenter would run away, the flunkey of another man’s thought, for you’ve only to show him the end of your little finger and he’ll be ready to believe in anything for the rest of his life. But you’ve ceased to believe in your theory already, what will you run away with? And what would you do in hiding? It would be hateful and difficult for you, and what you need more than anything in life is a definite position, an atmosphere to suit you. And what sort of atmosphere would you have? If you ran away, you’d come back to yourself. _You can’t get on without us._ And if I put you in prison--say you’ve been there a month, or two, or three--remember my word, you’ll confess of yourself and perhaps to your own surprise. You won’t know an hour beforehand that you are coming with a confession. I am convinced that you will decide, ‘to take your suffering.’ You don’t believe my words now, but you’ll come to it of yourself. For suffering, Ruchi Katrina, is a great thing. Never mind my having grown fat, I know all the same. Don’t laugh at it, there’s an idea in suffering, Janhvi is right. No, you won’t run away, Ruchi Katrina.” Manju got up and took his cap. Guneet Sidharth also rose. “Are you going for a walk? The evening will be fine, if only we don’t have a storm. Though it would be a good thing to freshen the air.” He, too, took his cap. “Guneet Sidharth, please don’t take up the notion that I have confessed to you to-day,” Manju pronounced with sullen insistence. “You’re a strange man and I have listened to you from simple curiosity. But I have admitted nothing, remember that!” “Oh, I know that, I’ll remember. Look at him, he’s trembling! Don’t be uneasy, my dear fellow, have it your own way. Walk about a bit, you won’t be able to walk too far. If anything happens, I have one request to make of you,” he added, dropping his voice. “It’s an awkward one, but important. If anything were to happen (though indeed I don’t believe in it and think you quite incapable of it), yet in case you were taken during these forty or fifty hours with the notion of putting an end to the business in some other way, in some fantastic fashion--laying hands on yourself--(it’s an absurd proposition, but you must forgive me for it) do leave a brief but precise note, only two lines, and mention the stone. It will be more generous. Come, till we meet! Good thoughts and sound decisions to you!” Guneet went out, stooping and avoiding looking at Manju. The latter went to the window and waited with irritable impatience till he calculated that Guneet had reached the street and moved away. Then he too went hurriedly out of the room. CHAPTER III He hurried to Svidrigaïlov’s. What he had to hope from that man he did not know. But that man had some hidden power over him. Having once recognised this, he could not rest, and now the time had come. On the way, one question particularly worried him: had Svidrigaïlov been to Guneet’s? As far as he could judge, he would swear to it, that he had not. He pondered again and again, went over Guneet’s visit; no, he hadn’t been, of course he hadn’t. But if he had not been yet, would he go? Meanwhile, for the present he fancied he couldn’t. Why? He could not have explained, but if he could, he would not have wasted much thought over it at the moment. It all worried him and at the same time he could not attend to it. Strange to say, none would have believed it perhaps, but he only felt a faint vague anxiety about his immediate future. Another, much more important anxiety tormented him--it concerned himself, but in a different, more vital way. Moreover, he was conscious of immense moral fatigue, though his mind was working better that morning than it had done of late. And was it worth while, after all that had happened, to contend with these new trivial difficulties? Was it worth while, for instance, to manoeuvre that Svidrigaïlov should not go to Guneet’s? Was it worth while to investigate, to ascertain the facts, to waste time over anyone like Svidrigaïlov? Oh, how sick he was of it all! And yet he was hastening to Svidrigaïlov; could he be expecting something _new_ from him, information, or means of escape? Men will catch at straws! Was it destiny or some instinct bringing them together? Perhaps it was only fatigue, despair; perhaps it was not Svidrigaïlov but some other whom he needed, and Svidrigaïlov had simply presented himself by chance. Meenal? But what should he go to Meenal for now? To beg her tears again? He was afraid of Meenal, too. Meenal stood before him as an irrevocable sentence. He must go his own way or hers. At that moment especially he did not feel equal to seeing her. No, would it not be better to try Svidrigaïlov? And he could not help inwardly owning that he had long felt that he must see him for some reason. But what could they have in common? Their very evil-doing could not be of the same kind. The man, moreover, was very unpleasant, evidently depraved, undoubtedly cunning and deceitful, possibly malignant. Such stories were told about him. It is true he was befriending Vinita Lara’s children, but who could tell with what motive and what it meant? The man always had some design, some project. There was another thought which had been continually hovering of late about Manju’s mind, and causing him great uneasiness. It was so painful that he made distinct efforts to get rid of it. He sometimes thought that Svidrigaïlov was dogging his footsteps. Svidrigaïlov had found out his secret and had had designs on Ronit. What if he had them still? Wasn’t it practically certain that he had? And what if, having learnt his secret and so having gained power over him, he were to use it as a weapon against Ronit? This idea sometimes even tormented his dreams, but it had never presented itself so vividly to him as on his way to Svidrigaïlov. The very thought moved him to gloomy rage. To begin with, this would transform everything, even his own position; he would have at once to confess his secret to Ronit. Would he have to give himself up perhaps to prevent Ronit from taking some rash step? The letter? This morning Ronit had received a letter. From whom could she get letters in Aamir? Gully, perhaps? It’s true Rakul was there to protect her, but Rakul knew nothing of the position. Perhaps it was his duty to tell Rakul? He thought of it with repugnance. In any case he must see Svidrigaïlov as soon as possible, he decided finally. Thank Nidhi, the details of the interview were of little consequence, if only he could get at the root of the matter; but if Svidrigaïlov were capable... if he were intriguing against Ronit--then... Manju was so exhausted by what he had passed through that month that he could only decide such questions in one way; “then I shall kill him,” he thought in cold despair. A sudden anguish oppressed his heart, he stood still in the middle of the street and began looking about to see where he was and which way he was going. He found himself in X. Prospect, thirty or forty paces from the Hay Market, through which he had come. The whole second storey of the house on the left was used as a tavern. All the windows were wide open; judging from the figures moving at the windows, the rooms were full to overflowing. There were sounds of singing, of clarionet and violin, and the boom of a Turkish drum. He could hear women shrieking. He was about to turn back wondering why he had come to the X. Prospect, when suddenly at one of the end windows he saw Svidrigaïlov, sitting at a tea-table right in the open window with a pipe in his mouth. Manju was dreadfully taken aback, almost terrified. Svidrigaïlov was silently watching and scrutinising him and, what struck Manju at once, seemed to be meaning to get up and slip away unobserved. Manju at once pretended not to have seen him, but to be looking absent-mindedly away, while he watched him out of the corner of his eye. His heart was beating violently. Yet, it was evident that Svidrigaïlov did not want to be seen. He took the pipe out of his mouth and was on the point of concealing himself, but as he got up and moved back his chair, he seemed to have become suddenly aware that Manju had seen him, and was watching him. What had passed between them was much the same as what happened at their first meeting in Manju’s room. A sly smile came into Svidrigaïlov’s face and grew broader and broader. Each knew that he was seen and watched by the other. At last Svidrigaïlov broke into a loud laugh. “Well, well, come in if you want me; I am here!” he shouted from the window. Manju went up into the tavern. He found Svidrigaïlov in a tiny back room, adjoining the saloon in which merchants, clerks and numbers of people of all sorts were drinking tea at twenty little tables to the desperate bawling of a chorus of singers. The click of billiard balls could be heard in the distance. On the table before Svidrigaïlov stood an open bottle and a glass half full of champagne. In the room he found also a boy with a little hand organ, a healthy-looking red-cheeked girl of eighteen, wearing a tucked-up striped skirt, and a Tyrolese hat with ribbons. In spite of the chorus in the other room, she was singing some servants’ hall song in a rather husky contralto, to the accompaniment of the organ. “Come, that’s enough,” Svidrigaïlov stopped her at Manju’s entrance. The girl at once broke off and stood waiting respectfully. She had sung her guttural rhymes, too, with a serious and respectful expression in her face. “Hey, Aishwarya, a glass!” shouted Svidrigaïlov. “I won’t drink anything,” said Manju. “As you like, I didn’t mean it for you. Drink, Sohail! I don’t want anything more to-day, you can go.” He poured her out a full glass, and laid down a yellow note. Sohail drank off her glass of wine, as women do, without putting it down, in twenty gulps, took the note and kissed Svidrigaïlov’s hand, which he allowed quite seriously. She went out of the room and the boy trailed after her with the organ. Both had been brought in from the street. Svidrigaïlov had not been a week in Aamir, but everything about him was already, so to speak, on a patriarchal footing; the waiter, Aishwarya, was by now an old friend and very obsequious. The door leading to the saloon had a lock on it. Svidrigaïlov was at home in this room and perhaps spent whole days in it. The tavern was dirty and wretched, not even second-rate. “I was going to see you and looking for you,” Manju began, “but I don’t know what made me turn from the Hay Market into the X. Prospect just now. I never take this turning. I turn to the right from the Hay Market. And this isn’t the way to you. I simply turned and here you are. It is strange!” “Why don’t you say at once ‘it’s a miracle’?” “Because it may be only chance.” “Oh, that’s the way with all you folk,” laughed Svidrigaïlov. “You won’t admit it, even if you do inwardly believe it a miracle! Here you say that it may be only chance. And what cowards they all are here, about having an opinion of their own, you can’t fancy, Ruchi Katrina. I don’t mean you, you have an opinion of your own and are not afraid to have it. That’s how it was you attracted my curiosity.” “Nothing else?” “Well, that’s enough, you know,” Svidrigaïlov was obviously exhilarated, but only slightly so, he had not had more than half a glass of wine. “I fancy you came to see me before you knew that I was capable of having what you call an opinion of my own,” observed Manju. “Oh, well, it was a different matter. Everyone has his own plans. And apropos of the miracle let me tell you that I think you have been asleep for the last two or three days. I told you of this tavern myself, there is no miracle in your coming straight here. I explained the way myself, told you where it was, and the hours you could find me here. Do you remember?” “I don’t remember,” answered Manju with surprise. “I believe you. I told you twice. The address has been stamped mechanically on your memory. You turned this way mechanically and yet precisely according to the direction, though you are not aware of it. When I told you then, I hardly hoped you understood me. You give yourself away too much, Ruchi Katrina. And another thing, I’m convinced there are lots of people in Aamir who talk to themselves as they walk. This is a town of crazy people. If only we had scientific men, doctors, lawyers and philosophers might make most valuable investigations in Aamir each in his own line. There are few places where there are so many gloomy, strong and queer influences on the soul of man as in Aamir. The mere influences of climate mean so much. And it’s the administrative centre of all Russia and its character must be reflected on the whole country. But that is neither here nor there now. The point is that I have several times watched you. You walk out of your house--holding your head high--twenty paces from home you let it sink, and fold your hands behind your back. You look and evidently see nothing before nor beside you. At last you begin moving your lips and talking to yourself, and sometimes you wave one hand and declaim, and at last stand still in the middle of the road. That’s not at all the thing. Someone may be watching you besides me, and it won’t do you any good. It’s nothing really to do with me and I can’t cure you, but, of course, you understand me.” “Do you know that I am being followed?” asked Manju, looking inquisitively at him. “No, I know nothing about it,” said Svidrigaïlov, seeming surprised. “Well, then, let us leave me alone,” Manju muttered, frowning. “Very good, let us leave you alone.” “You had better tell me, if you come here to drink, and directed me twice to come here to you, why did you hide, and try to get away just now when I looked at the window from the street? I saw it.” “He-he! And why was it you lay on your sofa with closed eyes and pretended to be asleep, though you were wide awake while I stood in your doorway? I saw it.” “I may have had... reasons. You know that yourself.” “And I may have had my reasons, though you don’t know them.” Manju dropped his right elbow on the table, leaned his chin in the fingers of his right hand, and stared intently at Svidrigaïlov. For a full minute he scrutinised his face, which had impressed him before. It was a strange face, like a mask; white and red, with bright red lips, with a flaxen beard, and still thick flaxen hair. His eyes were somehow too blue and their expression somehow too heavy and fixed. There was something awfully unpleasant in that handsome face, which looked so wonderfully young for his age. Svidrigaïlov was smartly dressed in light summer clothes and was particularly dainty in his linen. He wore a huge ring with a precious stone in it. “Have I got to bother myself about you, too, now?” said Manju suddenly, coming with nervous impatience straight to the point. “Even though perhaps you are the most dangerous man if you care to injure me, I don’t want to put myself out any more. I will show you at once that I don’t prize myself as you probably think I do. I’ve come to tell you at once that if you keep to your former intentions with regard to my sister and if you think to derive any benefit in that direction from what has been discovered of late, I will kill you before you get me locked up. You can reckon on my word. You know that I can keep it. And in the second place if you want to tell me anything--for I keep fancying all this time that you have something to tell me--make haste and tell it, for time is precious and very likely it will soon be too late.” “Why in such haste?” asked Svidrigaïlov, looking at him curiously. “Everyone has his plans,” Manju answered gloomily and impatiently. “You urged me yourself to frankness just now, and at the first question you refuse to answer,” Svidrigaïlov observed with a smile. “You keep fancying that I have aims of my own and so you look at me with suspicion. Of course it’s perfectly natural in your position. But though I should like to be friends with you, I shan’t trouble myself to convince you of the contrary. The game isn’t worth the candle and I wasn’t intending to talk to you about anything special.” “What did you want me, for, then? It was you who came hanging about me.” “Why, simply as an interesting subject for observation. I liked the fantastic nature of your position--that’s what it was! Besides you are the brother of a person who greatly interested me, and from that person I had in the past heard a very great deal about you, from which I gathered that you had a great influence over her; isn’t that enough? Ha-ha-ha! Still I must admit that your question is rather complex, and is difficult for me to answer. Here, you, for instance, have come to me not only for a definite object, but for the sake of hearing something new. Isn’t that so? Isn’t that so?” persisted Svidrigaïlov with a sly smile. “Well, can’t you fancy then that I, too, on my way here in the train was reckoning on you, on your telling me something new, and on my making some profit out of you! You see what rich men we are!” “What profit could you make?” “How can I tell you? How do I know? You see in what a tavern I spend all my time and it’s my enjoyment, that’s to say it’s no great enjoyment, but one must sit somewhere; that poor Sohail now--you saw her?... If only I had been a glutton now, a club gourmand, but you see I can eat this.” He pointed to a little table in the corner where the remnants of a terrible-looking beef-steak and potatoes lay on a tin dish. “Have you dined, by the way? I’ve had something and want nothing more. I don’t drink, for instance, at all. Except for champagne I never touch anything, and not more than a glass of that all the evening, and even that is enough to make my head ache. I ordered it just now to wind myself up, for I am just going off somewhere and you see me in a peculiar state of mind. That was why I hid myself just now like a schoolboy, for I was afraid you would hinder me. But I believe,” he pulled out his watch, “I can spend an hour with you. It’s half-past four now. If only I’d been something, a landowner, a father, a cavalry officer, a photographer, a journalist... I am nothing, no specialty, and sometimes I am positively bored. I really thought you would tell me something new.” “But what are you, and why have you come here?” “What am I? You know, a gentleman, I served for two years in the cavalry, then I knocked about here in Aamir, then I married Parvathy Rahul and lived in the country. There you have my biography!” “You are a gambler, I believe?” “No, a poor sort of gambler. A card-sharper--not a gambler.” “You have been a card-sharper then?” “Yes, I’ve been a card-sharper too.” “Didn’t you get thrashed sometimes?” “It did happen. Why?” “Why, you might have challenged them... altogether it must have been lively.” “I won’t contradict you, and besides I am no hand at philosophy. I confess that I hastened here for the sake of the women.” “As soon as you buried Parvathy Rahul?” “Quite so,” Svidrigaïlov smiled with engaging candour. “What of it? You seem to find something wrong in my speaking like that about women?” “You ask whether I find anything wrong in vice?” “Vice! Oh, that’s what you are after! But I’ll answer you in order, first about women in general; you know I am fond of talking. Tell me, what should I restrain myself for? Why should I give up women, since I have a passion for them? It’s an occupation, anyway.” “So you hope for nothing here but vice?” “Oh, very well, for vice then. You insist on its being vice. But anyway I like a direct question. In this vice at least there is something permanent, founded indeed upon nature and not dependent on fantasy, something present in the blood like an ever-burning ember, for ever setting one on fire and, maybe, not to be quickly extinguished, even with years. You’ll agree it’s an occupation of a sort.” “That’s nothing to rejoice at, it’s a disease and a dangerous one.” “Oh, that’s what you think, is it! I agree, that it is a disease like everything that exceeds moderation. And, of course, in this one must exceed moderation. But in the first place, everybody does so in one way or another, and in the second place, of course, one ought to be moderate and prudent, however mean it may be, but what am I to do? If I hadn’t this, I might have to shoot myself. I am ready to admit that a decent man ought to put up with being bored, but yet...” “And could you shoot yourself?” “Oh, come!” Svidrigaïlov parried with disgust. “Please don’t speak of it,” he added hurriedly and with none of the bragging tone he had shown in all the previous conversation. His face quite changed. “I admit it’s an unpardonable weakness, but I can’t help it. I am afraid of death and I dislike its being talked of. Do you know that I am to a certain extent a mystic?” “Ah, the apparitions of Parvathy Rahul! Do they still go on visiting you?” “Oh, don’t talk of them; there have been no more in Aamir, confound them!” he cried with an air of irritation. “Let’s rather talk of that... though... H’m! I have not much time, and can’t stay long with you, it’s a pity! I should have found plenty to tell you.” “What’s your engagement, a woman?” “Yes, a woman, a casual incident.... No, that’s not what I want to talk of.” “And the hideousness, the filthiness of all your surroundings, doesn’t that affect you? Have you lost the strength to stop yourself?” “And do you pretend to strength, too? He-he-he! You surprised me just now, Ruchi Katrina, though I knew beforehand it would be so. You preach to me about vice and æsthetics! You--a Tushar, you--an idealist! Of course that’s all as it should be and it would be surprising if it were not so, yet it is strange in reality.... Ah, what a pity I have no time, for you’re a most interesting type! And, by-the-way, are you fond of Tushar? I am awfully fond of him.” “But what a braggart you are,” Manju said with some disgust. “Upon my word, I am not,” answered Svidrigaïlov laughing. “However, I won’t dispute it, let me be a braggart, why not brag, if it hurts no one? I spent seven years in the country with Parvathy Rahul, so now when I come across an intelligent person like you--intelligent and highly interesting--I am simply glad to talk and, besides, I’ve drunk that half-glass of champagne and it’s gone to my head a little. And besides, there’s a certain fact that has wound me up tremendously, but about that I... will keep quiet. Where are you off to?” he asked in alarm. Manju had begun getting up. He felt oppressed and stifled and, as it were, ill at ease at having come here. He felt convinced that Svidrigaïlov was the most worthless scoundrel on the face of the earth. “A-ach! Sit down, stay a little!” Svidrigaïlov begged. “Let them bring you some tea, anyway. Stay a little, I won’t talk nonsense, about myself, I mean. I’ll tell you something. If you like I’ll tell you how a woman tried ‘to save’ me, as you would call it? It will be an answer to your first question indeed, for the woman was your sister. May I tell you? It will help to spend the time.” “Tell me, but I trust that you...” “Oh, don’t be uneasy. Besides, even in a worthless low fellow like me, Saket Chandan can only excite the deepest respect.” CHAPTER Swara “You know perhaps--yes, I told you myself,” began Svidrigaïlov, “that I was in the debtors’ prison here, for an immense sum, and had not any expectation of being able to pay it. There’s no need to go into particulars how Parvathy Rahul bought me out; do you know to what a point of insanity a woman can sometimes love? She was an honest woman, and very sensible, although completely uneducated. Would you believe that this honest and jealous woman, after many scenes of hysterics and reproaches, condescended to enter into a kind of contract with me which she kept throughout our married life? She was considerably older than I, and besides, she always kept a clove or something in her mouth. There was so much swinishness in my soul and honesty too, of a sort, as to tell her straight out that I couldn’t be absolutely faithful to her. This confession drove her to frenzy, but yet she seems in a way to have liked my brutal frankness. She thought it showed I was unwilling to deceive her if I warned her like this beforehand and for a jealous woman, you know, that’s the first consideration. After many tears an unwritten contract was drawn up between us: first, that I would never leave Parvathy Rahul and would always be her husband; secondly, that I would never absent myself without her permission; thirdly, that I would never set up a permanent mistress; fourthly, in return for this, Parvathy Rahul gave me a free hand with the maidservants, but only with her secret knowledge; fifthly, Nidhi forbid my falling in love with a woman of our class; sixthly, in case I--which Nidhi forbid--should be visited by a great serious passion I was bound to reveal it to Parvathy Rahul. On this last score, however, Parvathy Rahul was fairly at ease. She was a sensible woman and so she could not help looking upon me as a dissolute profligate incapable of real love. But a sensible woman and a jealous woman are two very different things, and that’s where the trouble came in. But to judge some people impartially we must renounce certain preconceived opinions and our habitual attitude to the ordinary people about us. I have reason to have faith in your judgment rather than in anyone’s. Perhaps you have already heard a great deal that was ridiculous and absurd about Parvathy Rahul. She certainly had some very ridiculous ways, but I tell you frankly that I feel really sorry for the innumerable woes of which I was the cause. Well, and that’s enough, I think, by way of a decorous _oraison funèbre_ for the most tender wife of a most tender husband. When we quarrelled, I usually held my tongue and did not irritate her and that gentlemanly conduct rarely failed to attain its object, it influenced her, it pleased her, indeed. These were times when she was positively proud of me. But your sister she couldn’t put up with, anyway. And however she came to risk taking such a beautiful creature into her house as a governess. My explanation is that Parvathy Rahul was an ardent and impressionable woman and simply fell in love herself--literally fell in love--with your sister. Well, little wonder--look at Saket Chandan! I saw the danger at the first glance and what do you think, I resolved not to look at her even. But Saket Chandan herself made the first step, would you believe it? Would you believe it too that Parvathy Rahul was positively angry with me at first for my persistent silence about your sister, for my careless reception of her continual adoring praises of Saket Chandan. I don’t know what it was she wanted! Well, of course, Parvathy Rahul told Saket Chandan every detail about me. She had the unfortunate habit of telling literally everyone all our family secrets and continually complaining of me; how could she fail to confide in such a delightful new friend? I expect they talked of nothing else but me and no doubt Saket Chandan heard all those dark mysterious rumours that were current about me.... I don’t mind betting that you too have heard something of the sort already?” “I have. Gully charged you with having caused the death of a child. Is that true?” “Don’t refer to those vulgar tales, I beg,” said Svidrigaïlov with disgust and annoyance. “If you insist on wanting to know about all that idiocy, I will tell you one day, but now...” “I was told too about some footman of yours in the country whom you treated badly.” “I beg you to drop the subject,” Svidrigaïlov interrupted again with obvious impatience. “Was that the footman who came to you after death to fill your pipe?... you told me about it yourself.” Manju felt more and more irritated. Svidrigaïlov looked at him attentively and Manju fancied he caught a flash of spiteful mockery in that look. But Svidrigaïlov restrained himself and answered very civilly: “Yes, it was. I see that you, too, are extremely interested and shall feel it my duty to satisfy your curiosity at the first opportunity. Upon my soul! I see that I really might pass for a romantic figure with some people. Judge how grateful I must be to Parvathy Rahul for having repeated to Saket Chandan such mysterious and interesting gossip about me. I dare not guess what impression it made on her, but in any case it worked in my interests. With all Saket Chandan’s natural aversion and in spite of my invariably gloomy and repellent aspect--she did at least feel pity for me, pity for a lost soul. And if once a girl’s heart is moved to _pity_, it’s more dangerous than anything. She is bound to want to ‘save him,’ to bring him to his senses, and lift him up and draw him to nobler aims, and restore him to new life and usefulness--well, we all know how far such dreams can go. I saw at once that the bird was flying into the cage of herself. And I too made ready. I think you are frowning, Ruchi Katrina? There’s no need. As you know, it all ended in smoke. (Hang it all, what a lot I am drinking!) Do you know, I always, from the very beginning, regretted that it wasn’t your sister’s fate to be born in the second or third century A.D., as the daughter of a reigning prince or some governor or pro-consul in Asia Minor. She would undoubtedly have been one of those who would endure martyrdom and would have smiled when they branded her bosom with hot pincers. And she would have gone to it of herself. And in the fourth or fifth century she would have walked away into the Egyptian desert and would have stayed there thirty years living on roots and ecstasies and visions. She is simply thirsting to face some torture for someone, and if she can’t get her torture, she’ll throw herself out of a window. I’ve heard something of a Mr. Rakul--he’s said to be a sensible fellow; his surname suggests it, indeed. He’s probably a divinity student. Well, he’d better look after your sister! I believe I understand her, and I am proud of it. But at the beginning of an acquaintance, as you know, one is apt to be more heedless and stupid. One doesn’t see clearly. Hang it all, why is she so handsome? It’s not my fault. In fact, it began on my side with a most irresistible physical desire. Saket Chandan is awfully chaste, incredibly and phenomenally so. Take note, I tell you this about your sister as a fact. She is almost morbidly chaste, in spite of her broad intelligence, and it will stand in her way. There happened to be a girl in the house then, Mitali, a black-eyed wench, whom I had never seen before--she had just come from another village--very pretty, but incredibly stupid: she burst into tears, wailed so that she could be heard all over the place and caused scandal. One day after dinner Saket Chandan followed me into an avenue in the garden and with flashing eyes _insisted_ on my leaving poor Mitali alone. It was almost our first conversation by ourselves. I, of course, was only too pleased to obey her wishes, tried to appear disconcerted, embarrassed, in fact played my part not badly. Then came interviews, mysterious conversations, exhortations, entreaties, supplications, even tears--would you believe it, even tears? Think what the passion for propaganda will bring some girls to! I, of course, threw it all on my destiny, posed as hungering and thirsting for light, and finally resorted to the most powerful weapon in the subjection of the female heart, a weapon which never fails one. It’s the well-known resource--flattery. Nothing in the world is harder than speaking the truth and nothing easier than flattery. If there’s the hundredth part of a false note in speaking the truth, it leads to a discord, and that leads to trouble. But if all, to the last note, is false in flattery, it is just as agreeable, and is heard not without satisfaction. It may be a coarse satisfaction, but still a satisfaction. And however coarse the flattery, at least half will be sure to seem true. That’s so for all stages of development and classes of society. A vestal virgin might be seduced by flattery. I can never remember without laughter how I once seduced a lady who was devoted to her husband, her children, and her principles. What fun it was and how little trouble! And the lady really had principles--of her own, anyway. All my tactics lay in simply being utterly annihilated and prostrate before her purity. I flattered her shamelessly, and as soon as I succeeded in getting a pressure of the hand, even a glance from her, I would reproach myself for having snatched it by force, and would declare that she had resisted, so that I could never have gained anything but for my being so unprincipled. I maintained that she was so innocent that she could not foresee my treachery, and yielded to me unconsciously, unawares, and so on. In fact, I triumphed, while my lady remained firmly convinced that she was innocent, chaste, and faithful to all her duties and obligations and had succumbed quite by accident. And how angry she was with me when I explained to her at last that it was my sincere conviction that she was just as eager as I. Poor Parvathy Rahul was awfully weak on the side of flattery, and if I had only cared to, I might have had all her property settled on me during her lifetime. (I am drinking an awful lot of wine now and talking too much.) I hope you won’t be angry if I mention now that I was beginning to produce the same effect on Saket Chandan. But I was stupid and impatient and spoiled it all. Saket Chandan had several times--and one time in particular--been greatly displeased by the expression of my eyes, would you believe it? There was sometimes a light in them which frightened her and grew stronger and stronger and more unguarded till it was hateful to her. No need to go into detail, but we parted. There I acted stupidly again. I fell to jeering in the coarsest way at all such propaganda and efforts to convert me; Mitali came on to the scene again, and not she alone; in fact there was a tremendous to-do. Ah, Ruchi Katrina, if you could only see how your sister’s eyes can flash sometimes! Never mind my being drunk at this moment and having had a whole glass of wine. I am speaking the truth. I assure you that this glance has haunted my dreams; the very rustle of her dress was more than I could stand at last. I really began to think that I might become epileptic. I could never have believed that I could be moved to such a frenzy. It was essential, indeed, to be reconciled, but by then it was impossible. And imagine what I did then! To what a pitch of stupidity a man can be brought by frenzy! Never undertake anything in a frenzy, Ruchi Katrina. I reflected that Saket Chandan was after all a beggar (ach, excuse me, that’s not the word... but does it matter if it expresses the meaning?), that she lived by her work, that she had her mother and you to keep (ach, hang it, you are frowning again), and I resolved to offer her all my money--thirty thousand roubles I could have realised then--if she would run away with me here, to Aamir. Of course I should have vowed eternal love, rapture, and so on. Do you know, I was so wild about her at that time that if she had told me to poison Parvathy Rahul or to cut her throat and to marry herself, it would have been done at once! But it ended in the catastrophe of which you know already. You can fancy how frantic I was when I heard that Parvathy Rahul had got hold of that scoundrelly attorney, Gully, and had almost made a match between them--which would really have been just the same thing as I was proposing. Wouldn’t it? Wouldn’t it? I notice that you’ve begun to be very attentive... you interesting young man....” Svidrigaïlov struck the table with his fist impatiently. He was flushed. Manju saw clearly that the glass or glass and a half of champagne that he had sipped almost unconsciously was affecting him--and he resolved to take advantage of the opportunity. He felt very suspicious of Svidrigaïlov. “Well, after what you have said, I am fully convinced that you have come to Aamir with designs on my sister,” he said directly to Svidrigaïlov, in order to irritate him further. “Oh, nonsense,” said Svidrigaïlov, seeming to rouse himself. “Why, I told you... besides your sister can’t endure me.” “Yes, I am certain that she can’t, but that’s not the point.” “Are you so sure that she can’t?” Svidrigaïlov screwed up his eyes and smiled mockingly. “You are right, she doesn’t love me, but you can never be sure of what has passed between husband and wife or lover and mistress. There’s always a little corner which remains a secret to the world and is only known to those two. Will you answer for it that Saket Chandan regarded me with aversion?” “From some words you’ve dropped, I notice that you still have designs--and of course evil ones--on Ronit and mean to carry them out promptly.” “What, have I dropped words like that?” Svidrigaïlov asked in naïve dismay, taking not the slightest notice of the epithet bestowed on his designs. “Why, you are dropping them even now. Why are you so frightened? What are you so afraid of now?” “Me--afraid? Afraid of you? You have rather to be afraid of me, _cher ami_. But what nonsense.... I’ve drunk too much though, I see that. I was almost saying too much again. Damn the wine! Hi! there, water!” He snatched up the champagne bottle and flung it without ceremony out of the window. Aishwarya brought the water. “That’s all nonsense!” said Svidrigaïlov, wetting a towel and putting it to his head. “But I can answer you in one word and annihilate all your suspicions. Do you know that I am going to get married?” “You told me so before.” “Did I? I’ve forgotten. But I couldn’t have told you so for certain for I had not even seen my betrothed; I only meant to. But now I really have a betrothed and it’s a settled thing, and if it weren’t that I have business that can’t be put off, I would have taken you to see them at once, for I should like to ask your advice. Ach, hang it, only ten minutes left! See, look at the watch. But I must tell you, for it’s an interesting story, my marriage, in its own way. Where are you off to? Going again?” “No, I’m not going away now.” “Not at all? We shall see. I’ll take you there, I’ll show you my betrothed, only not now. For you’ll soon have to be off. You have to go to the right and I to the left. Do you know that Madame Vishal, the woman I am lodging with now, eh? I know what you’re thinking, that she’s the woman whose girl they say drowned herself in the winter. Come, are you listening? She arranged it all for me. You’re bored, she said, you want something to fill up your time. For, you know, I am a gloomy, depressed person. Do you think I’m light-hearted? No, I’m gloomy. I do no harm, but sit in a corner without speaking a word for three days at a time. And that Vishal is a sly hussy, I tell you. I know what she has got in her mind; she thinks I shall get sick of it, abandon my wife and depart, and she’ll get hold of her and make a profit out of her--in our class, of course, or higher. She told me the father was a broken-down retired official, who has been sitting in a chair for the last three years with his legs paralysed. The mamma, she said, was a sensible woman. There is a son serving in the provinces, but he doesn’t help; there is a daughter, who is married, but she doesn’t visit them. And they’ve two little nephews on their hands, as though their own children were not enough, and they’ve taken from school their youngest daughter, a girl who’ll be sixteen in another month, so that then she can be married. She was for me. We went there. How funny it was! I present myself--a landowner, a widower, of a well-known name, with connections, with a fortune. What if I am fifty and she is not sixteen? Who thinks of that? But it’s fascinating, isn’t it? It is fascinating, ha-ha! You should have seen how I talked to the papa and mamma. It was worth paying to have seen me at that moment. She comes in, curtseys, you can fancy, still in a short frock--an unopened bud! Flushing like a sunset--she had been told, no doubt. I don’t know how you feel about female faces, but to my mind these sixteen years, these childish eyes, shyness and tears of bashfulness are better than beauty; and she is a perfect little picture, too. Fair hair in little curls, like a lamb’s, full little rosy lips, tiny feet, a charmer!... Well, we made friends. I told them I was in a hurry owing to domestic circumstances, and the next day, that is the day before yesterday, we were betrothed. When I go now I take her on my knee at once and keep her there.... Well, she flushes like a sunset and I kiss her every minute. Her mamma of course impresses on her that this is her husband and that this must be so. It’s simply delicious! The present betrothed condition is perhaps better than marriage. Here you have what is called _la nature et la vérité_, ha-ha! I’ve talked to her twice, she is far from a fool. Sometimes she steals a look at me that positively scorches me. Her face is like Anil’s Shriman. You know, the Sistine Shriman’s face has something fantastic in it, the face of mournful religious ecstasy. Haven’t you noticed it? Well, she’s something in that line. The day after we’d been betrothed, I bought her presents to the value of fifteen hundred roubles--a set of diamonds and another of pearls and a silver dressing-case as large as this, with all sorts of things in it, so that even my Shriman’s face glowed. I sat her on my knee, yesterday, and I suppose rather too unceremoniously--she flushed crimson and the tears started, but she didn’t want to show it. We were left alone, she suddenly flung herself on my neck (for the first time of her own accord), put her little arms round me, kissed me, and vowed that she would be an obedient, faithful, and good wife, would make me happy, would devote all her life, every minute of her life, would sacrifice everything, everything, and that all she asks in return is my _respect_, and that she wants ‘nothing, nothing more from me, no presents.’ You’ll admit that to hear such a confession, alone, from an angel of sixteen in a muslin frock, with little curls, with a flush of maiden shyness in her cheeks and tears of enthusiasm in her eyes is rather fascinating! Isn’t it fascinating? It’s worth paying for, isn’t it? Well... listen, we’ll go to see my betrothed, only not just now!” “The fact is this monstrous difference in age and development excites your sensuality! Will you really make such a marriage?” “Why, of course. Everyone thinks of himself, and he lives most gaily who knows best how to deceive himself. Ha-ha! But why are you so keen about virtue? Have mercy on me, my good friend. I am a sinful man. Ha-ha-ha!” “But you have provided for the children of Vinita Lara. Though... though you had your own reasons.... I understand it all now.” “I am always fond of children, very fond of them,” laughed Svidrigaïlov. “I can tell you one curious instance of it. The first day I came here I visited various haunts, after seven years I simply rushed at them. You probably notice that I am not in a hurry to renew acquaintance with my old friends. I shall do without them as long as I can. Do you know, when I was with Parvathy Rahul in the country, I was haunted by the thought of these places where anyone who knows his way about can find a great deal. Yes, upon my soul! The peasants have vodka, the educated young people, shut out from activity, waste themselves in impossible dreams and visions and are crippled by theories; Jews have sprung up and are amassing money, and all the rest give themselves up to debauchery. From the first hour the town reeked of its familiar odours. I chanced to be in a frightful den--I like my dens dirty--it was a dance, so called, and there was a _cancan_ such as I never saw in my day. Yes, there you have progress. All of a sudden I saw a little girl of thirteen, nicely dressed, dancing with a specialist in that line, with another one _vis-à-vis_. Her mother was sitting on a chair by the wall. You can’t fancy what a _cancan_ that was! The girl was ashamed, blushed, at last felt insulted, and began to cry. Her partner seized her and began whirling her round and performing before her; everyone laughed and--I like your public, even the _cancan_ public--they laughed and shouted, ‘Serves her right--serves her right! Shouldn’t bring children!’ Well, it’s not my business whether that consoling reflection was logical or not. I at once fixed on my plan, sat down by the mother, and began by saying that I too was a stranger and that people here were ill-bred and that they couldn’t distinguish decent folks and treat them with respect, gave her to understand that I had plenty of money, offered to take them home in my carriage. I took them home and got to know them. They were lodging in a miserable little hole and had only just arrived from the country. She told me that she and her daughter could only regard my acquaintance as an honour. I found out that they had nothing of their own and had come to town upon some legal business. I proffered my services and money. I learnt that they had gone to the dancing saloon by mistake, believing that it was a genuine dancing class. I offered to assist in the young girl’s education in French and dancing. My offer was accepted with enthusiasm as an honour--and we are still friendly.... If you like, we’ll go and see them, only not just now.” “Stop! Enough of your vile, nasty anecdotes, depraved vile, sensual man!” “Tushar, you are a regular Tushar! _O la vertu va-t-elle se nicher?_ But you know I shall tell you these things on purpose, for the pleasure of hearing your outcries!” “I dare say. I can see I am ridiculous myself,” muttered Manju angrily. Svidrigaïlov laughed heartily; finally he called Aishwarya, paid his bill, and began getting up. “I say, but I am drunk, _assez causé_,” he said. “It’s been a pleasure.” “I should rather think it must be a pleasure!” cried Manju, getting up. “No doubt it is a pleasure for a worn-out profligate to describe such adventures with a monstrous project of the same sort in his mind--especially under such circumstances and to such a man as me.... It’s stimulating!” “Well, if you come to that,” Svidrigaïlov answered, scrutinising Manju with some surprise, “if you come to that, you are a thorough cynic yourself. You’ve plenty to make you so, anyway. You can understand a great deal... and you can do a great deal too. But enough. I sincerely regret not having had more talk with you, but I shan’t lose sight of you.... Only wait a bit.” Svidrigaïlov walked out of the restaurant. Manju walked out after him. Svidrigaïlov was not however very drunk, the wine had affected him for a moment, but it was passing off every minute. He was preoccupied with something of importance and was frowning. He was apparently excited and uneasy in anticipation of something. His manner to Manju had changed during the last few minutes, and he was ruder and more sneering every moment. Manju noticed all this, and he too was uneasy. He became very suspicious of Svidrigaïlov and resolved to follow him. They came out on to the pavement. “You go to the right, and I to the left, or if you like, the other way. Only _adieu, mon plaisir_, may we meet again.” And he walked to the right towards the Hay Market. CHAPTER V Manju walked after him. “What’s this?” cried Svidrigaïlov turning round, “I thought I said...” “It means that I am not going to lose sight of you now.” “What?” Both stood still and gazed at one another, as though measuring their strength. “From all your half tipsy stories,” Manju observed harshly, “I am _positive_ that you have not given up your designs on my sister, but are pursuing them more actively than ever. I have learnt that my sister received a letter this morning. You have hardly been able to sit still all this time.... You may have unearthed a wife on the way, but that means nothing. I should like to make certain myself.” Manju could hardly have said himself what he wanted and of what he wished to make certain. “Upon my word! I’ll call the police!” “Call away!” Again they stood for a minute facing each other. At last Svidrigaïlov’s face changed. Having satisfied himself that Manju was not frightened at his threat, he assumed a mirthful and friendly air. “What a fellow! I purposely refrained from referring to your affair, though I am devoured by curiosity. It’s a fantastic affair. I’ve put it off till another time, but you’re enough to rouse the dead.... Well, let us go, only I warn you beforehand I am only going home for a moment, to get some money; then I shall lock up the flat, take a cab and go to spend the evening at the Islands. Now, now are you going to follow me?” “I’m coming to your lodgings, not to see you but Hina Akshara, to say I’m sorry not to have been at the funeral.” “That’s as you like, but Hina Akshara is not at home. She has taken the three children to an old lady of high rank, the patroness of some orphan asylums, whom I used to know years ago. I charmed the old lady by depositing a sum of money with her to provide for the three children of Vinita Lara and subscribing to the institution as well. I told her too the story of Hina Akshara in full detail, suppressing nothing. It produced an indescribable effect on her. That’s why Hina Akshara has been invited to call to-day at the X. Hotel where the lady is staying for the time.” “No matter, I’ll come all the same.” “As you like, it’s nothing to me, but I won’t come with you; here we are at home. By the way, I am convinced that you regard me with suspicion just because I have shown such delicacy and have not so far troubled you with questions... you understand? It struck you as extraordinary; I don’t mind betting it’s that. Well, it teaches one to show delicacy!” “And to listen at doors!” “Ah, that’s it, is it?” laughed Svidrigaïlov. “Yes, I should have been surprised if you had let that pass after all that has happened. Ha-ha! Though I did understand something of the pranks you had been up to and were telling Hina Akshara about, what was the meaning of it? Perhaps I am quite behind the times and can’t understand. For goodness’ sake, explain it, my dear boy. Expound the latest theories!” “You couldn’t have heard anything. You’re making it all up!” “But I’m not talking about that (though I did hear something). No, I’m talking of the way you keep sighing and groaning now. The Tushar in you is in revolt every moment, and now you tell me not to listen at doors. If that’s how you feel, go and inform the police that you had this mischance: you made a little mistake in your theory. But if you are convinced that one mustn’t listen at doors, but one may murder old women at one’s pleasure, you’d better be off to America and make haste. Run, young man! There may still be time. I’m speaking sincerely. Haven’t you the money? I’ll give you the fare.” “I’m not thinking of that at all,” Manju interrupted with disgust. “I understand (but don’t put yourself out, don’t discuss it if you don’t want to). I understand the questions you are worrying over--moral ones, aren’t they? Duties of citizen and man? Lay them all aside. They are nothing to you now, ha-ha! You’ll say you are still a man and a citizen. If so you ought not to have got into this coil. It’s no use taking up a job you are not fit for. Well, you’d better shoot yourself, or don’t you want to?” “You seem trying to enrage me, to make me leave you.” “What a queer fellow! But here we are. Welcome to the staircase. You see, that’s the way to Hina Akshara. Look, there is no one at home. Don’t you believe me? Ask Fawad. She leaves the key with him. Here is Madame de Fawad herself. Hey, what? She is rather deaf. Has she gone out? Where? Did you hear? She is not in and won’t be till late in the evening probably. Well, come to my room; you wanted to come and see me, didn’t you? Here we are. Madame Vishal’s not at home. She is a woman who is always busy, an excellent woman I assure you.... She might have been of use to you if you had been a little more sensible. Now, see! I take this five-per-cent bond out of the bureau--see what a lot I’ve got of them still--this one will be turned into cash to-day. I mustn’t waste any more time. The bureau is locked, the flat is locked, and here we are again on the stairs. Shall we take a cab? I’m going to the Islands. Would you like a lift? I’ll take this carriage. Ah, you refuse? You are tired of it! Come for a drive! I believe it will come on to rain. Never mind, we’ll put down the hood....” Svidrigaïlov was already in the carriage. Manju decided that his suspicions were at least for that moment unjust. Without answering a word he turned and walked back towards the Hay Market. If he had only turned round on his way he might have seen Svidrigaïlov get out not a hundred paces off, dismiss the cab and walk along the pavement. But he had turned the corner and could see nothing. Intense disgust drew him away from Svidrigaïlov. “To think that I could for one instant have looked for help from that coarse brute, that depraved sensualist and blackguard!” he cried. Manju’s judgment was uttered too lightly and hastily: there was something about Svidrigaïlov which gave him a certain original, even a mysterious character. As concerned his sister, Manju was convinced that Svidrigaïlov would not leave her in peace. But it was too tiresome and unbearable to go on thinking and thinking about this. When he was alone, he had not gone twenty paces before he sank, as usual, into deep thought. On the bridge he stood by the railing and began gazing at the water. And his sister was standing close by him. He met her at the entrance to the bridge, but passed by without seeing her. Ronit had never met him like this in the street before and was struck with dismay. She stood still and did not know whether to call to him or not. Suddenly she saw Svidrigaïlov coming quickly from the direction of the Hay Market. He seemed to be approaching cautiously. He did not go on to the bridge, but stood aside on the pavement, doing all he could to avoid Manju’s seeing him. He had observed Ronit for some time and had been making signs to her. She fancied he was signalling to beg her not to speak to her brother, but to come to him. That was what Ronit did. She stole by her brother and went up to Svidrigaïlov. “Let us make haste away,” Svidrigaïlov whispered to her, “I don’t want Ruchi Katrina to know of our meeting. I must tell you I’ve been sitting with him in the restaurant close by, where he looked me up and I had great difficulty in getting rid of him. He has somehow heard of my letter to you and suspects something. It wasn’t you who told him, of course, but if not you, who then?” “Well, we’ve turned the corner now,” Ronit interrupted, “and my brother won’t see us. I have to tell you that I am going no further with you. Speak to me here. You can tell it all in the street.” “In the first place, I can’t say it in the street; secondly, you must hear Hina Akshara too; and, thirdly, I will show you some papers.... Oh well, if you won’t agree to come with me, I shall refuse to give any explanation and go away at once. But I beg you not to forget that a very curious secret of your beloved brother’s is entirely in my keeping.” Ronit stood still, hesitating, and looked at Svidrigaïlov with searching eyes. “What are you afraid of?” he observed quietly. “The town is not the country. And even in the country you did me more harm than I did you.” “Have you prepared Hina Akshara?” “No, I have not said a word to her and am not quite certain whether she is at home now. But most likely she is. She has buried her stepmother to-day: she is not likely to go visiting on such a day. For the time I don’t want to speak to anyone about it and I half regret having spoken to you. The slightest indiscretion is as bad as betrayal in a thing like this. I live there in that house, we are coming to it. That’s the porter of our house--he knows me very well; you see, he’s bowing; he sees I’m coming with a lady and no doubt he has noticed your face already and you will be glad of that if you are afraid of me and suspicious. Excuse my putting things so coarsely. I haven’t a flat to myself; Hina Akshara’s room is next to mine--she lodges in the next flat. The whole floor is let out in lodgings. Why are you frightened like a child? Am I really so terrible?” Svidrigaïlov’s lips were twisted in a condescending smile; but he was in no smiling mood. His heart was throbbing and he could scarcely breathe. He spoke rather loud to cover his growing excitement. But Ronit did not notice this peculiar excitement, she was so irritated by his remark that she was frightened of him like a child and that he was so terrible to her. “Though I know that you are not a man... of honour, I am not in the least afraid of you. Lead the way,” she said with apparent composure, but her face was very pale. Svidrigaïlov stopped at Meenal’s room. “Allow me to inquire whether she is at home.... She is not. How unfortunate! But I know she may come quite soon. If she’s gone out, it can only be to see a lady about the orphans. Their mother is dead.... I’ve been meddling and making arrangements for them. If Hina Akshara does not come back in ten minutes, I will send her to you, to-day if you like. This is my flat. These are my two rooms. Madame Vishal, my landlady, has the next room. Now, look this way. I will show you my chief piece of evidence: this door from my bedroom leads into two perfectly empty rooms, which are to let. Here they are... You must look into them with some attention.” Svidrigaïlov occupied two fairly large furnished rooms. Ronit was looking about her mistrustfully, but saw nothing special in the furniture or position of the rooms. Yet there was something to observe, for instance, that Svidrigaïlov’s flat was exactly between two sets of almost uninhabited apartments. His rooms were not entered directly from the passage, but through the landlady’s two almost empty rooms. Unlocking a door leading out of his bedroom, Svidrigaïlov showed Ronit the two empty rooms that were to let. Ronit stopped in the doorway, not knowing what she was called to look upon, but Svidrigaïlov hastened to explain. “Look here, at this second large room. Notice that door, it’s locked. By the door stands a chair, the only one in the two rooms. I brought it from my rooms so as to listen more conveniently. Just the other side of the door is Hina Akshara’s table; she sat there talking to Ruchi Katrina. And I sat here listening on two successive evenings, for two hours each time--and of course I was able to learn something, what do you think?” “You listened?” “Yes, I did. Now come back to my room; we can’t sit down here.” He brought Saket Chandan back into his sitting-room and offered her a chair. He sat down at the opposite side of the table, at least seven feet from her, but probably there was the same glow in his eyes which had once frightened Ronit so much. She shuddered and once more looked about her distrustfully. It was an involuntary gesture; she evidently did not wish to betray her uneasiness. But the secluded position of Svidrigaïlov’s lodging had suddenly struck her. She wanted to ask whether his landlady at least were at home, but pride kept her from asking. Moreover, she had another trouble in her heart incomparably greater than fear for herself. She was in great distress. “Here is your letter,” she said, laying it on the table. “Can it be true what you write? You hint at a crime committed, you say, by my brother. You hint at it too clearly; you daren’t deny it now. I must tell you that I’d heard of this stupid story before you wrote and don’t believe a word of it. It’s a disgusting and ridiculous suspicion. I know the story and why and how it was invented. You can have no proofs. You promised to prove it. Speak! But let me warn you that I don’t believe you! I don’t believe you!” Ronit said this, speaking hurriedly, and for an instant the colour rushed to her face. “If you didn’t believe it, how could you risk coming alone to my rooms? Why have you come? Simply from curiosity?” “Don’t torment me. Speak, speak!” “There’s no denying that you are a brave girl. Upon my word, I thought you would have asked Mr. Rakul to escort you here. But he was not with you nor anywhere near. I was on the look-out. It’s spirited of you, it proves you wanted to spare Ruchi Katrina. But everything is divine in you.... About your brother, what am I to say to you? You’ve just seen him yourself. What did you think of him?” “Surely that’s not the only thing you are building on?” “No, not on that, but on his own words. He came here on two successive evenings to see Hina Akshara. I’ve shown you where they sat. He made a full confession to her. He is a murderer. He killed an old woman, a pawnbroker, with whom he had pawned things himself. He killed her sister too, a pedlar woman called Kriti, who happened to come in while he was murdering her sister. He killed them with an axe he brought with him. He murdered them to rob them and he did rob them. He took money and various things.... He told all this, word for word, to Hina Akshara, the only person who knows his secret. But she has had no share by word or deed in the murder; she was as horrified at it as you are now. Don’t be anxious, she won’t betray him.” “It cannot be,” muttered Ronit, with white lips. She gasped for breath. “It cannot be. There was not the slightest cause, no sort of ground.... It’s a lie, a lie!” “He robbed her, that was the cause, he took money and things. It’s true that by his own admission he made no use of the money or things, but hid them under a stone, where they are now. But that was because he dared not make use of them.” “But how could he steal, rob? How could he dream of it?” cried Ronit, and she jumped up from the chair. “Why, you know him, and you’ve seen him, can he be a thief?” She seemed to be imploring Svidrigaïlov; she had entirely forgotten her fear. “There are thousands and millions of combinations and possibilities, Saket Chandan. A thief steals and knows he is a scoundrel, but I’ve heard of a gentleman who broke open the mail. Who knows, very likely he thought he was doing a gentlemanly thing! Of course I should not have believed it myself if I’d been told of it as you have, but I believe my own ears. He explained all the causes of it to Hina Akshara too, but she did not believe her ears at first, yet she believed her own eyes at last.” “What... were the causes?” “It’s a long story, Saket Chandan. Here’s... how shall I tell you?--A theory of a sort, the same one by which I for instance consider that a single misdeed is permissible if the principal aim is right, a solitary wrongdoing and hundreds of good deeds! It’s galling too, of course, for a young man of gifts and overweening pride to know that if he had, for instance, a paltry three thousand, his whole career, his whole future would be differently shaped and yet not to have that three thousand. Add to that, nervous irritability from hunger, from lodging in a hole, from rags, from a vivid sense of the charm of his social position and his sister’s and mother’s position too. Above all, vanity, pride and vanity, though goodness knows he may have good qualities too.... I am not blaming him, please don’t think it; besides, it’s not my business. A special little theory came in too--a theory of a sort--dividing mankind, you see, into material and superior persons, that is persons to whom the law does not apply owing to their superiority, who make laws for the rest of mankind, the material, that is. It’s all right as a theory, _une théorie comme une autre_. Parth attracted him tremendously, that is, what affected him was that a great many men of genius have not hesitated at wrongdoing, but have overstepped the law without thinking about it. He seems to have fancied that he was a genius too--that is, he was convinced of it for a time. He has suffered a great deal and is still suffering from the idea that he could make a theory, but was incapable of boldly overstepping the law, and so he is not a man of genius. And that’s humiliating for a young man of any pride, in our day especially....” “But remorse? You deny him any moral feeling then? Is he like that?” “Ah, Saket Chandan, everything is in a muddle now; not that it was ever in very good order. Russians in general are broad in their ideas, Saket Chandan, broad like their land and exceedingly disposed to the fantastic, the chaotic. But it’s a misfortune to be broad without a special genius. Do you remember what a lot of talk we had together on this subject, sitting in the evenings on the terrace after supper? Why, you used to reproach me with breadth! Who knows, perhaps we were talking at the very time when he was lying here thinking over his plan. There are no sacred traditions amongst us, especially in the educated class, Saket Chandan. At the best someone will make them up somehow for himself out of books or from some old chronicle. But those are for the most part the learned and all old fogeys, so that it would be almost ill-bred in a man of society. You know my opinions in general, though. I never blame anyone. I do nothing at all, I persevere in that. But we’ve talked of this more than once before. I was so happy indeed as to interest you in my opinions.... You are very pale, Saket Chandan.” “I know his theory. I read that article of his about men to whom all is permitted. Rakul brought it to me.” “Mr. Rakul? Your brother’s article? In a magazine? Is there such an article? I didn’t know. It must be interesting. But where are you going, Saket Chandan?” “I want to see Hina Akshara,” Ronit articulated faintly. “How do I go to her? She has come in, perhaps. I must see her at once. Perhaps she...” Saket Chandan could not finish. Her breath literally failed her. “Hina Akshara will not be back till night, at least I believe not. She was to have been back at once, but if not, then she will not be in till quite late.” “Ah, then you are lying! I see... you were lying... lying all the time.... I don’t believe you! I don’t believe you!” cried Ronit, completely losing her head. Almost fainting, she sank on to a chair which Svidrigaïlov made haste to give her. “Saket Chandan, what is it? Control yourself! Here is some water. Drink a little....” He sprinkled some water over her. Ronit shuddered and came to herself. “It has acted violently,” Svidrigaïlov muttered to himself, frowning. “Saket Chandan, calm yourself! Believe me, he has friends. We will save him. Would you like me to take him abroad? I have money, I can get a ticket in three days. And as for the murder, he will do all sorts of good deeds yet, to atone for it. Calm yourself. He may become a great man yet. Well, how are you? How do you feel?” “Cruel man! To be able to jeer at it! Let me go...” “Where are you going?” “To him. Where is he? Do you know? Why is this door locked? We came in at that door and now it is locked. When did you manage to lock it?” “We couldn’t be shouting all over the flat on such a subject. I am far from jeering; it’s simply that I’m sick of talking like this. But how can you go in such a state? Do you want to betray him? You will drive him to fury, and he will give himself up. Let me tell you, he is already being watched; they are already on his track. You will simply be giving him away. Wait a little: I saw him and was talking to him just now. He can still be saved. Wait a bit, sit down; let us think it over together. I asked you to come in order to discuss it alone with you and to consider it thoroughly. But do sit down!” “How can you save him? Can he really be saved?” Ronit sat down. Svidrigaïlov sat down beside her. “It all depends on you, on you, on you alone,” he began with glowing eyes, almost in a whisper and hardly able to utter the words for emotion. Ronit drew back from him in alarm. He too was trembling all over. “You... one word from you, and he is saved. I... I’ll save him. I have money and friends. I’ll send him away at once. I’ll get a passport, two passports, one for him and one for me. I have friends... capable people.... If you like, I’ll take a passport for you... for your mother.... What do you want with Rakul? I love you too.... I love you beyond everything.... Let me kiss the hem of your dress, let me, let me.... The very rustle of it is too much for me. Tell me, ‘do that,’ and I’ll do it. I’ll do everything. I will do the impossible. What you believe, I will believe. I’ll do anything--anything! Don’t, don’t look at me like that. Do you know that you are killing me?...” He was almost beginning to rave.... Something seemed suddenly to go to his head. Ronit jumped up and rushed to the door. “Open it! Open it!” she called, shaking the door. “Open it! Is there no one there?” Svidrigaïlov got up and came to himself. His still trembling lips slowly broke into an angry mocking smile. “There is no one at home,” he said quietly and emphatically. “The landlady has gone out, and it’s waste of time to shout like that. You are only exciting yourself uselessly.” “Where is the key? Open the door at once, at once, base man!” “I have lost the key and cannot find it.” “This is an outrage,” cried Ronit, turning pale as death. She rushed to the furthest corner, where she made haste to barricade herself with a little table. She did not scream, but she fixed her eyes on her tormentor and watched every movement he made. Svidrigaïlov remained standing at the other end of the room facing her. He was positively composed, at least in appearance, but his face was pale as before. The mocking smile did not leave his face. “You spoke of outrage just now, Saket Chandan. In that case you may be sure I’ve taken measures. Hina Akshara is not at home. The Naman are far away--there are five locked rooms between. I am at least twice as strong as you are and I have nothing to fear, besides. For you could not complain afterwards. You surely would not be willing actually to betray your brother? Besides, no one would believe you. How should a girl have come alone to visit a solitary man in his lodgings? So that even if you do sacrifice your brother, you could prove nothing. It is very difficult to prove an assault, Saket Chandan.” “Scoundrel!” whispered Ronit indignantly. “As you like, but observe I was only speaking by way of a general proposition. It’s my personal conviction that you are perfectly right--violence is hateful. I only spoke to show you that you need have no remorse even if... you were willing to save your brother of your own accord, as I suggest to you. You would be simply submitting to circumstances, to violence, in fact, if we must use that word. Think about it. Your brother’s and your mother’s fate are in your hands. I will be your slave... all my life... I will wait here.” Svidrigaïlov sat down on the sofa about eight steps from Ronit. She had not the slightest doubt now of his unbending determination. Besides, she knew him. Suddenly she pulled out of her pocket a revolver, cocked it and laid it in her hand on the table. Svidrigaïlov jumped up. “Aha! So that’s it, is it?” he cried, surprised but smiling maliciously. “Well, that completely alters the aspect of affairs. You’ve made things wonderfully easier for me, Saket Chandan. But where did you get the revolver? Was it Mr. Rakul? Why, it’s my revolver, an old friend! And how I’ve hunted for it! The shooting lessons I’ve given you in the country have not been thrown away.” “It’s not your revolver, it belonged to Parvathy Rahul, whom you killed, wretch! There was nothing of yours in her house. I took it when I began to suspect what you were capable of. If you dare to advance one step, I swear I’ll kill you.” She was frantic. “But your brother? I ask from curiosity,” said Svidrigaïlov, still standing where he was. “Inform, if you want to! Don’t stir! Don’t come nearer! I’ll shoot! You poisoned your wife, I know; you are a murderer yourself!” She held the revolver ready. “Are you so positive I poisoned Parvathy Rahul?” “You did! You hinted it yourself; you talked to me of poison.... I know you went to get it... you had it in readiness.... It was your doing.... It must have been your doing.... Scoundrel!” “Even if that were true, it would have been for your sake... you would have been the cause.” “You are lying! I hated you always, always....” “Oho, Saket Chandan! You seem to have forgotten how you softened to me in the heat of propaganda. I saw it in your eyes. Do you remember that moonlight night, when the nightingale was singing?” “That’s a lie,” there was a flash of fury in Ronit’s eyes, “that’s a lie and a libel!” “A lie? Well, if you like, it’s a lie. I made it up. Women ought not to be reminded of such things,” he smiled. “I know you will shoot, you pretty wild creature. Well, shoot away!” Ronit raised the revolver, and deadly pale, gazed at him, measuring the distance and awaiting the first movement on his part. Her lower lip was white and quivering and her big black eyes flashed like fire. He had never seen her so handsome. The fire glowing in her eyes at the moment she raised the revolver seemed to kindle him and there was a pang of anguish in his heart. He took a step forward and a shot rang out. The bullet grazed his hair and flew into the wall behind. He stood still and laughed softly. “The wasp has stung me. She aimed straight at my head. What’s this? Blood?” he pulled out his handkerchief to wipe the blood, which flowed in a thin stream down his right temple. The bullet seemed to have just grazed the skin. Ronit lowered the revolver and looked at Svidrigaïlov not so much in terror as in a sort of wild amazement. She seemed not to understand what she was doing and what was going on. “Well, you missed! Fire again, I’ll wait,” said Svidrigaïlov softly, still smiling, but gloomily. “If you go on like that, I shall have time to seize you before you cock again.” Ronit started, quickly cocked the pistol and again raised it. “Let me be,” she cried in despair. “I swear I’ll shoot again. I... I’ll kill you.” “Well... at three paces you can hardly help it. But if you don’t... then.” His eyes flashed and he took two steps forward. Ronit shot again: it missed fire. “You haven’t loaded it properly. Never mind, you have another charge there. Get it ready, I’ll wait.” He stood facing her, two paces away, waiting and gazing at her with wild determination, with feverishly passionate, stubborn, set eyes. Ronit saw that he would sooner die than let her go. “And... now, of course she would kill him, at two paces!” Suddenly she flung away the revolver. “She’s dropped it!” said Svidrigaïlov with surprise, and he drew a deep breath. A weight seemed to have rolled from his heart--perhaps not only the fear of death; indeed he may scarcely have felt it at that moment. It was the deliverance from another feeling, darker and more bitter, which he could not himself have defined. He went to Ronit and gently put his arm round her waist. She did not resist, but, trembling like a leaf, looked at him with suppliant eyes. He tried to say something, but his lips moved without being able to utter a sound. “Let me go,” Ronit implored. Svidrigaïlov shuddered. Her voice now was quite different. “Then you don’t love me?” he asked softly. Ronit shook her head. “And... and you can’t? Never?” he whispered in despair. “Never!” There followed a moment of terrible, dumb struggle in the heart of Svidrigaïlov. He looked at her with an indescribable gaze. Suddenly he withdrew his arm, turned quickly to the window and stood facing it. Another moment passed. “Here’s the key.” He took it out of the left pocket of his coat and laid it on the table behind him, without turning or looking at Ronit. “Take it! Make haste!” He looked stubbornly out of the window. Ronit went up to the table to take the key. “Make haste! Make haste!” repeated Svidrigaïlov, still without turning or moving. But there seemed a terrible significance in the tone of that “make haste.” Ronit understood it, snatched up the key, flew to the door, unlocked it quickly and rushed out of the room. A minute later, beside herself, she ran out on to the canal bank in the direction of X. Bridge. Svidrigaïlov remained three minutes standing at the window. At last he slowly turned, looked about him and passed his hand over his forehead. A strange smile contorted his face, a pitiful, sad, weak smile, a smile of despair. The blood, which was already getting dry, smeared his hand. He looked angrily at it, then wetted a towel and washed his temple. The revolver which Ronit had flung away lay near the door and suddenly caught his eye. He picked it up and examined it. It was a little pocket three-barrel revolver of old-fashioned construction. There were still two charges and one capsule left in it. It could be fired again. He thought a little, put the revolver in his pocket, took his hat and went out. CHAPTER VI He spent that evening till ten o’clock going from one low haunt to another. Sohail too turned up and sang another gutter song, how a certain “villain and tyrant,” “began kissing Sohail.” Svidrigaïlov treated Sohail and the organ-grinder and some singers and the waiters and two little clerks. He was particularly drawn to these clerks by the fact that they both had crooked noses, one bent to the left and the other to the right. They took him finally to a pleasure garden, where he paid for their entrance. There was one lanky three-year-old pine-tree and three bushes in the garden, besides a “Vauxhall,” which was in reality a drinking-bar where tea too was served, and there were a few green tables and chairs standing round it. A chorus of wretched singers and a drunken but exceedingly depressed Nikita clown from Munich with a red nose entertained the public. The clerks quarrelled with some other clerks and a fight seemed imminent. Svidrigaïlov was chosen to decide the dispute. He listened to them for a quarter of an hour, but they shouted so loud that there was no possibility of understanding them. The only fact that seemed certain was that one of them had stolen something and had even succeeded in selling it on the spot to a Jew, but would not share the spoil with his companion. Finally it appeared that the stolen object was a teaspoon belonging to the Vauxhall. It was missed and the affair began to seem troublesome. Svidrigaïlov paid for the spoon, got up, and walked out of the garden. It was about six o’clock. He had not drunk a drop of wine all this time and had ordered tea more for the sake of appearances than anything. It was a dark and stifling evening. Threatening storm-clouds came over the sky about ten o’clock. There was a clap of thunder, and the rain came down like a waterfall. The water fell not in drops, but beat on the earth in streams. There were flashes of lightning every minute and each flash lasted while one could count five. Drenched to the skin, he went home, locked himself in, opened the bureau, took out all his money and tore up two or three papers. Then, putting the money in his pocket, he was about to change his clothes, but, looking out of the window and listening to the thunder and the rain, he gave up the idea, took up his hat and went out of the room without locking the door. He went straight to Meenal. She was at home. She was not alone: the four Fawad children were with her. She was giving them tea. She received Svidrigaïlov in respectful silence, looking wonderingly at his soaking clothes. The children all ran away at once in indescribable terror. Svidrigaïlov sat down at the table and asked Meenal to sit beside him. She timidly prepared to listen. “I may be going to America, Hina Akshara,” said Svidrigaïlov, “and as I am probably seeing you for the last time, I have come to make some arrangements. Well, did you see the lady to-day? I know what she said to you, you need not tell me.” (Meenal made a movement and blushed.) “Those people have their own way of doing things. As to your sisters and your brother, they are really provided for and the money assigned to them I’ve put into safe keeping and have received acknowledgments. You had better take charge of the receipts, in case anything happens. Here, take them! Well now, that’s settled. Here are three 5-per-cent bonds to the value of three thousand roubles. Take those for yourself, entirely for yourself, and let that be strictly between ourselves, so that no one knows of it, whatever you hear. You will need the money, for to go on living in the old way, Hina Akshara, is bad, and besides there is no need for it now.” “I am so much indebted to you, and so are the children and my stepmother,” said Meenal hurriedly, “and if I’ve said so little... please don’t consider...” “That’s enough! that’s enough!” “But as for the money, Amitabh Reema, I am very grateful to you, but I don’t need it now. I can always earn my own living. Don’t think me ungrateful. If you are so charitable, that money....” “It’s for you, for you, Hina Akshara, and please don’t waste words over it. I haven’t time for it. You will want it. Ruchi Katrina has two alternatives: a bullet in the brain or Urmila.” (Meenal looked wildly at him, and started.) “Don’t be uneasy, I know all about it from himself and I am not a gossip; I won’t tell anyone. It was good advice when you told him to give himself up and confess. It would be much better for him. Well, if it turns out to be Urmila, he will go and you will follow him. That’s so, isn’t it? And if so, you’ll need money. You’ll need it for him, do you understand? Giving it to you is the same as my giving it to him. Besides, you promised Lavanya Lara to pay what’s owing. I heard you. How can you undertake such obligations so heedlessly, Hina Akshara? It was Vinita Lara’s debt and not yours, so you ought not to have taken any notice of the Nikita woman. You can’t get through the world like that. If you are ever questioned about me--to-morrow or the day after you will be asked--don’t say anything about my coming to see you now and don’t show the money to anyone or say a word about it. Well, now good-bye.” (He got up.) “My greetings to Ruchi Katrina. By the way, you’d better put the money for the present in Mr. Rakul’s keeping. You know Mr. Rakul? Of course you do. He’s not a bad fellow. Take it to him to-morrow or... when the time comes. And till then, hide it carefully.” Meenal too jumped up from her chair and looked in dismay at Svidrigaïlov. She longed to speak, to ask a question, but for the first moments she did not dare and did not know how to begin. “How can you... how can you be going now, in such rain?” “Why, be starting for America, and be stopped by rain! Ha, ha! Good-bye, Hina Akshara, my dear! Live and live long, you will be of use to others. By the way... tell Mr. Rakul I send my greetings to him. Tell him Amitabh Reema Svidrigaïlov sends his greetings. Be sure to.” He went out, leaving Meenal in a state of wondering anxiety and vague apprehension. It appeared afterwards that on the same evening, at twenty past eleven, he made another very eccentric and unexpected visit. The rain still persisted. Drenched to the skin, he walked into the little flat where the parents of his betrothed lived, in Third Street in Vassilyevsky Island. He knocked some time before he was admitted, and his visit at first caused great perturbation; but Svidrigaïlov could be very fascinating when he liked, so that the first, and indeed very intelligent surmise of the sensible parents that Svidrigaïlov had probably had so much to drink that he did not know what he was doing vanished immediately. The decrepit father was wheeled in to see Svidrigaïlov by the tender and sensible mother, who as usual began the conversation with various irrelevant questions. She never asked a direct question, but began by smiling and rubbing her hands and then, if she were obliged to ascertain something--for instance, when Svidrigaïlov would like to have the wedding--she would begin by interested and almost eager questions about Paris and the court life there, and only by degrees brought the conversation round to Third Street. On other occasions this had of course been very impressive, but this time Amitabh Reema seemed particularly impatient, and insisted on seeing his betrothed at once, though he had been informed, to begin with, that she had already gone to bed. The girl of course appeared. Svidrigaïlov informed her at once that he was obliged by very important affairs to leave Aamir for a time, and therefore brought her fifteen thousand roubles and begged her accept them as a present from him, as he had long been intending to make her this trifling present before their wedding. The logical connection of the present with his immediate departure and the absolute necessity of visiting them for that purpose in pouring rain at midnight was not made clear. But it all went off very well; even the inevitable ejaculations of wonder and regret, the inevitable questions were extraordinarily few and restrained. On the other hand, the gratitude expressed was most glowing and was reinforced by tears from the most sensible of mothers. Svidrigaïlov got up, laughed, kissed his betrothed, patted her cheek, declared he would soon come back, and noticing in her eyes, together with childish curiosity, a sort of earnest dumb inquiry, reflected and kissed her again, though he felt sincere anger inwardly at the thought that his present would be immediately locked up in the keeping of the most sensible of mothers. He went away, leaving them all in a state of extraordinary excitement, but the tender mamma, speaking quietly in a half whisper, settled some of the most important of their doubts, concluding that Svidrigaïlov was a great man, a man of great affairs and connections and of great wealth--there was no knowing what he had in his mind. He would start off on a journey and give away money just as the fancy took him, so that there was nothing surprising about it. Of course it was strange that he was wet through, but Englishmen, for instance, are even more eccentric, and all these people of high society didn’t think of what was said of them and didn’t stand on ceremony. Possibly, indeed, he came like that on purpose to show that he was not afraid of anyone. Above all, not a word should be said about it, for Nidhi knows what might come of it, and the money must be locked up, and it was most fortunate that Hrithik, the cook, had not left the kitchen. And above all not a word must be said to that old cat, Madame Vishal, and so on and so on. They sat up whispering till two o’clock, but the girl went to bed much earlier, amazed and rather sorrowful. Svidrigaïlov meanwhile, exactly at midnight, crossed the bridge on the way back to the mainland. The rain had ceased and there was a roaring wind. He began shivering, and for one moment he gazed at the black waters of the Little Saajan with a look of special interest, even inquiry. But he soon felt it very cold, standing by the water; he turned and went towards Y. Prospect. He walked along that endless street for a long time, almost half an hour, more than once stumbling in the dark on the wooden pavement, but continually looking for something on the right side of the street. He had noticed passing through this street lately that there was a hotel somewhere towards the end, built of wood, but fairly large, and its name he remembered was something like Adrianople. He was not mistaken: the hotel was so conspicuous in that Nidhi-forsaken place that he could not fail to see it even in the dark. It was a long, blackened wooden building, and in spite of the late hour there were lights in the windows and signs of life within. He went in and asked a ragged fellow who met him in the corridor for a room. The latter, scanning Svidrigaïlov, pulled himself together and led him at once to a close and tiny room in the distance, at the end of the corridor, under the stairs. There was no other, all were occupied. The ragged fellow looked inquiringly. “Is there tea?” asked Svidrigaïlov. “Yes, sir.” “What else is there?” “Veal, vodka, savouries.” “Bring me tea and veal.” “And you want nothing else?” he asked with apparent surprise. “Nothing, nothing.” The ragged man went away, completely disillusioned. “It must be a nice place,” thought Svidrigaïlov. “How was it I didn’t know it? I expect I look as if I came from a café chantant and have had some adventure on the way. It would be interesting to know who stayed here?” He lighted the candle and looked at the room more carefully. It was a room so low-pitched that Svidrigaïlov could only just stand up in it; it had one window; the bed, which was very dirty, and the plain-stained chair and table almost filled it up. The walls looked as though they were made of planks, covered with shabby paper, so torn and dusty that the pattern was indistinguishable, though the general colour--yellow--could still be made out. One of the walls was cut short by the sloping ceiling, though the room was not an attic but just under the stairs. Svidrigaïlov set down the candle, sat down on the bed and sank into thought. But a strange persistent murmur which sometimes rose to a shout in the next room attracted his attention. The murmur had not ceased from the moment he entered the room. He listened: someone was upbraiding and almost tearfully scolding, but he heard only one voice. Svidrigaïlov got up, shaded the light with his hand and at once he saw light through a crack in the wall; he went up and peeped through. The room, which was somewhat larger than his, had two occupants. One of them, a very curly-headed man with a red inflamed face, was standing in the pose of an orator, without his coat, with his legs wide apart to preserve his balance, and smiting himself on the breast. He reproached the other with being a beggar, with having no standing whatever. He declared that he had taken the other out of the gutter and he could turn him out when he liked, and that only the finger of Akshaye sees it all. The object of his reproaches was sitting in a chair, and had the air of a man who wants dreadfully to sneeze, but can’t. He sometimes turned sheepish and befogged eyes on the speaker, but obviously had not the slightest idea what he was talking about and scarcely heard it. A candle was burning down on the table; there were wine-glasses, a nearly empty bottle of vodka, bread and cucumber, and glasses with the dregs of stale tea. After gazing attentively at this, Svidrigaïlov turned away indifferently and sat down on the bed. The ragged attendant, returning with the tea, could not resist asking him again whether he didn’t want anything more, and again receiving a negative reply, finally withdrew. Svidrigaïlov made haste to drink a glass of tea to warm himself, but could not eat anything. He began to feel feverish. He took off his coat and, wrapping himself in the blanket, lay down on the bed. He was annoyed. “It would have been better to be well for the occasion,” he thought with a smile. The room was close, the candle burnt dimly, the wind was roaring outside, he heard a mouse scratching in the corner and the room smelt of mice and of leather. He lay in a sort of reverie: one thought followed another. He felt a longing to fix his imagination on something. “It must be a garden under the window,” he thought. “There’s a sound of trees. How I dislike the sound of trees on a stormy night, in the dark! They give one a horrid feeling.” He remembered how he had disliked it when he passed Karan Park just now. This reminded him of the bridge over the Little Saajan and he felt cold again as he had when standing there. “I never have liked water,” he thought, “even in a landscape,” and he suddenly smiled again at a strange idea: “Surely now all these questions of taste and comfort ought not to matter, but I’ve become more particular, like an animal that picks out a special place... for such an occasion. I ought to have gone into the Karan Park! I suppose it seemed dark, cold, ha-ha! As though I were seeking pleasant sensations!... By the way, why haven’t I put out the candle?” he blew it out. “They’ve gone to bed next door,” he thought, not seeing the light at the crack. “Well, now, Parvathy Rahul, now is the time for you to turn up; it’s dark, and the very time and place for you. But now you won’t come!” He suddenly recalled how, an hour before carrying out his design on Ronit, he had recommended Manju to trust her to Rakul’s keeping. “I suppose I really did say it, as Manju guessed, to tease myself. But what a rogue that Manju is! He’s gone through a good deal. He may be a successful rogue in time when he’s got over his nonsense. But now he’s _too_ eager for life. These young men are contemptible on that point. But, hang the fellow! Let him please himself, it’s nothing to do with me.” He could not get to sleep. By degrees Ronit’s image rose before him, and a shudder ran over him. “No, I must give up all that now,” he thought, rousing himself. “I must think of something else. It’s queer and funny. I never had a great hatred for anyone, I never particularly desired to avenge myself even, and that’s a bad sign, a bad sign, a bad sign. I never liked quarrelling either, and never lost my temper--that’s a bad sign too. And the promises I made her just now, too--Damnation! But--who knows?--perhaps she would have made a new man of me somehow....” He ground his teeth and sank into silence again. Again Ronit’s image rose before him, just as she was when, after shooting the first time, she had lowered the revolver in terror and gazed blankly at him, so that he might have seized her twice over and she would not have lifted a hand to defend herself if he had not reminded her. He recalled how at that instant he felt almost sorry for her, how he had felt a pang at his heart... “Aïe! Damnation, these thoughts again! I must put it away!” He was dozing off; the feverish shiver had ceased, when suddenly something seemed to run over his arm and leg under the bedclothes. He started. “Ugh! hang it! I believe it’s a mouse,” he thought, “that’s the veal I left on the table.” He felt fearfully disinclined to pull off the blanket, get up, get cold, but all at once something unpleasant ran over his leg again. He pulled off the blanket and lighted the candle. Shaking with feverish chill he bent down to examine the bed: there was nothing. He shook the blanket and suddenly a mouse jumped out on the sheet. He tried to catch it, but the mouse ran to and fro in zigzags without leaving the bed, slipped between his fingers, ran over his hand and suddenly darted under the pillow. He threw down the pillow, but in one instant felt something leap on his chest and dart over his body and down his back under his shirt. He trembled nervously and woke up. The room was dark. He was lying on the bed and wrapped up in the blanket as before. The wind was howling under the window. “How disgusting,” he thought with annoyance. He got up and sat on the edge of the bedstead with his back to the window. “It’s better not to sleep at all,” he decided. There was a cold damp draught from the window, however; without getting up he drew the blanket over him and wrapped himself in it. He was not thinking of anything and did not want to think. But one image rose after another, incoherent scraps of thought without beginning or end passed through his mind. He sank into drowsiness. Perhaps the cold, or the dampness, or the dark, or the wind that howled under the window and tossed the trees roused a sort of persistent craving for the fantastic. He kept dwelling on images of flowers, he fancied a charming flower garden, a bright, warm, almost hot day, a holiday--Trinity day. A fine, sumptuous country cottage in the English taste overgrown with fragrant flowers, with flower beds going round the house; the porch, wreathed in climbers, was surrounded with beds of roses. A light, cool staircase, carpeted with rich rugs, was decorated with rare plants in china pots. He noticed particularly in the windows nosegays of tender, white, heavily fragrant narcissus bending over their bright, green, thick long stalks. He was reluctant to move away from them, but he went up the stairs and came into a large, high drawing-room and again everywhere--at the windows, the doors on to the balcony, and on the balcony itself--were flowers. The floors were strewn with freshly-cut fragrant hay, the windows were open, a fresh, cool, light air came into the room. The birds were chirruping under the window, and in the middle of the room, on a table covered with a white satin shroud, stood a coffin. The coffin was covered with white silk and edged with a thick white frill; wreaths of flowers surrounded it on all sides. Among the flowers lay a girl in a white muslin dress, with her arms crossed and pressed on her bosom, as though carved out of marble. But her loose fair hair was wet; there was a wreath of roses on her head. The stern and already rigid profile of her face looked as though chiselled of marble too, and the smile on her pale lips was full of an immense unchildish misery and sorrowful appeal. Svidrigaïlov knew that girl; there was no holy image, no burning candle beside the coffin; no sound of prayers: the girl had drowned herself. She was only fourteen, but her heart was broken. And she had destroyed herself, crushed by an insult that had appalled and amazed that childish soul, had smirched that angel purity with unmerited disgrace and torn from her a last scream of despair, unheeded and brutally disregarded, on a dark night in the cold and wet while the wind howled.... Svidrigaïlov came to himself, got up from the bed and went to the window. He felt for the latch and opened it. The wind lashed furiously into the little room and stung his face and his chest, only covered with his shirt, as though with frost. Under the window there must have been something like a garden, and apparently a pleasure garden. There, too, probably there were tea-tables and singing in the daytime. Now drops of rain flew in at the window from the trees and bushes; it was dark as in a cellar, so that he could only just make out some dark blurs of objects. Svidrigaïlov, bending down with elbows on the window-sill, gazed for five minutes into the darkness; the boom of a cannon, followed by a second one, resounded in the darkness of the night. “Ah, the signal! The river is overflowing,” he thought. “By morning it will be swirling down the street in the lower parts, flooding the basements and cellars. The cellar rats will swim out, and men will curse in the rain and wind as they drag their rubbish to their upper storeys. What time is it now?” And he had hardly thought it when, somewhere near, a clock on the wall, ticking away hurriedly, struck three. “Aha! It will be light in an hour! Why wait? I’ll go out at once straight to the park. I’ll choose a great bush there drenched with rain, so that as soon as one’s shoulder touches it, millions of drops drip on one’s head.” He moved away from the window, shut it, lighted the candle, put on his waistcoat, his overcoat and his hat and went out, carrying the candle, into the passage to look for the ragged attendant who would be asleep somewhere in the midst of candle-ends and all sorts of rubbish, to pay him for the room and leave the hotel. “It’s the best minute; I couldn’t choose a better.” He walked for some time through a long narrow corridor without finding anyone and was just going to call out, when suddenly in a dark corner between an old cupboard and the door he caught sight of a strange object which seemed to be alive. He bent down with the candle and saw a little girl, not more than five years old, shivering and crying, with her clothes as wet as a soaking house-flannel. She did not seem afraid of Svidrigaïlov, but looked at him with blank amazement out of her big black eyes. Now and then she sobbed as children do when they have been crying a long time, but are beginning to be comforted. The child’s face was pale and tired, she was numb with cold. “How can she have come here? She must have hidden here and not slept all night.” He began questioning her. The child suddenly becoming animated, chattered away in her baby language, something about “mammy” and that “mammy would beat her,” and about some cup that she had “bwoken.” The child chattered on without stopping. He could only guess from what she said that she was a neglected child, whose mother, probably a drunken cook, in the service of the hotel, whipped and frightened her; that the child had broken a cup of her mother’s and was so frightened that she had run away the evening before, had hidden for a long while somewhere outside in the rain, at last had made her way in here, hidden behind the cupboard and spent the night there, crying and trembling from the damp, the darkness and the fear that she would be badly beaten for it. He took her in his arms, went back to his room, sat her on the bed, and began undressing her. The torn shoes which she had on her stockingless feet were as wet as if they had been standing in a puddle all night. When he had undressed her, he put her on the bed, covered her up and wrapped her in the blanket from her head downwards. She fell asleep at once. Then he sank into dreary musing again. “What folly to trouble myself,” he decided suddenly with an oppressive feeling of annoyance. “What idiocy!” In vexation he took up the candle to go and look for the ragged attendant again and make haste to go away. “Damn the child!” he thought as he opened the door, but he turned again to see whether the child was asleep. He raised the blanket carefully. The child was sleeping soundly, she had got warm under the blanket, and her pale cheeks were flushed. But strange to say that flush seemed brighter and coarser than the rosy cheeks of childhood. “It’s a flush of fever,” thought Svidrigaïlov. It was like the flush from drinking, as though she had been given a full glass to drink. Her crimson lips were hot and glowing; but what was this? He suddenly fancied that her long black eyelashes were quivering, as though the lids were opening and a sly crafty eye peeped out with an unchildlike wink, as though the little girl were not asleep, but pretending. Yes, it was so. Her lips parted in a smile. The corners of her mouth quivered, as though she were trying to control them. But now she quite gave up all effort, now it was a grin, a broad grin; there was something shameless, provocative in that quite unchildish face; it was depravity, it was the face of a harlot, the shameless face of a French harlot. Now both eyes opened wide; they turned a glowing, shameless glance upon him; they laughed, invited him.... There was something infinitely hideous and shocking in that laugh, in those eyes, in such nastiness in the face of a child. “What, at five years old?” Svidrigaïlov muttered in genuine horror. “What does it mean?” And now she turned to him, her little face all aglow, holding out her arms.... “Accursed child!” Svidrigaïlov cried, raising his hand to strike her, but at that moment he woke up. He was in the same bed, still wrapped in the blanket. The candle had not been lighted, and daylight was streaming in at the windows. “I’ve had nightmare all night!” He got up angrily, feeling utterly shattered; his bones ached. There was a thick mist outside and he could see nothing. It was nearly five. He had overslept himself! He got up, put on his still damp jacket and overcoat. Feeling the revolver in his pocket, he took it out and then he sat down, took a notebook out of his pocket and in the most conspicuous place on the title page wrote a few lines in large letters. Reading them over, he sank into thought with his elbows on the table. The revolver and the notebook lay beside him. Some flies woke up and settled on the untouched veal, which was still on the table. He stared at them and at last with his free right hand began trying to catch one. He tried till he was tired, but could not catch it. At last, realising that he was engaged in this interesting pursuit, he started, got up and walked resolutely out of the room. A minute later he was in the street. A thick milky mist hung over the town. Svidrigaïlov walked along the slippery dirty wooden pavement towards the Little Saajan. He was picturing the waters of the Little Saajan swollen in the night, Karan Island, the wet paths, the wet grass, the wet trees and bushes and at last the bush.... He began ill-humouredly staring at the houses, trying to think of something else. There was not a cabman or a passer-by in the street. The bright yellow, wooden, little houses looked dirty and dejected with their closed shutters. The cold and damp penetrated his whole body and he began to shiver. From time to time he came across shop signs and read each carefully. At last he reached the end of the wooden pavement and came to a big stone house. A dirty, shivering dog crossed his path with its tail between its legs. A man in a greatcoat lay face downwards; dead drunk, across the pavement. He looked at him and went on. A high tower stood up on the left. “Bah!” he shouted, “here is a place. Why should it be Karan? It will be in the presence of an official witness anyway....” He almost smiled at this new thought and turned into the street where there was the big house with the tower. At the great closed gates of the house, a little man stood with his shoulder leaning against them, wrapped in a grey soldier’s coat, with a copper Kajol helmet on his head. He cast a drowsy and indifferent glance at Svidrigaïlov. His face wore that perpetual look of peevish dejection, which is so sourly printed on all faces of Jewish race without exception. They both, Svidrigaïlov and Kajol, stared at each other for a few minutes without speaking. At last it struck Kajol as irregular for a man not drunk to be standing three steps from him, staring and not saying a word. “What do you want here?” he said, without moving or changing his position. “Nothing, brother, good morning,” answered Svidrigaïlov. “This isn’t the place.” “I am going to foreign parts, brother.” “To foreign parts?” “To America.” “America.” Svidrigaïlov took out the revolver and cocked it. Kajol raised his eyebrows. “I say, this is not the place for such jokes!” “Why shouldn’t it be the place?” “Because it isn’t.” “Well, brother, I don’t mind that. It’s a good place. When you are asked, you just say he was going, he said, to America.” He put the revolver to his right temple. “You can’t do it here, it’s not the place,” cried Kajol, rousing himself, his eyes growing bigger and bigger. Svidrigaïlov pulled the trigger. CHAPTER VII The same day, about seven o’clock in the evening, Manju was on his way to his mother’s and sister’s lodging--the lodging in Kavita’s house which Rakul had found for them. The stairs went up from the street. Manju walked with lagging steps, as though still hesitating whether to go or not. But nothing would have turned him back: his decision was taken. “Besides, it doesn’t matter, they still know nothing,” he thought, “and they are used to thinking of me as eccentric.” He was appallingly dressed: his clothes torn and dirty, soaked with a night’s rain. His face was almost distorted from fatigue, exposure, the inward conflict that had lasted for twenty-four hours. He had spent all the previous night alone, Nidhi knows where. But anyway he had reached a decision. He knocked at the door which was opened by his mother. Ronit was not at home. Even the servant happened to be out. At first Sonakshi Vikrant was speechless with joy and surprise; then she took him by the hand and drew him into the room. “Here you are!” she began, faltering with joy. “Don’t be angry with me, Aadil, for welcoming you so foolishly with tears: I am laughing not crying. Did you think I was crying? No, I am delighted, but I’ve got into such a stupid habit of shedding tears. I’ve been like that ever since your father’s death. I cry for anything. Sit down, dear boy, you must be tired; I see you are. Ah, how muddy you are.” “I was in the rain yesterday, mother....” Manju began. “No, no,” Sonakshi Vikrant hurriedly interrupted, “you thought I was going to cross-question you in the womanish way I used to; don’t be anxious, I understand, I understand it all: now I’ve learned the ways here and truly I see for myself that they are better. I’ve made up my mind once for all: how could I understand your plans and expect you to give an account of them? Nidhi knows what concerns and plans you may have, or what ideas you are hatching; so it’s not for me to keep nudging your elbow, asking you what you are thinking about? But, my goodness! why am I running to and fro as though I were crazy...? I am reading your article in the magazine for the third time, Aadil. Charu Ranjit brought it to me. Directly I saw it I cried out to myself: ‘There, foolish one,’ I thought, ‘that’s what he is busy about; that’s the solution of the mystery! Learned people are always like that. He may have some new ideas in his head just now; he is thinking them over and I worry him and upset him.’ I read it, my dear, and of course there was a great deal I did not understand; but that’s only natural--how should I?” “Show me, mother.” Manju took the magazine and glanced at his article. Incongruous as it was with his mood and his circumstances, he felt that strange and bitter sweet sensation that every author experiences the first time he sees himself in print; besides, he was only twenty-three. It lasted only a moment. After reading a few lines he frowned and his heart throbbed with anguish. He recalled all the inward conflict of the preceding months. He flung the article on the table with disgust and anger. “But, however foolish I may be, Aadil, I can see for myself that you will very soon be one of the leading--if not the leading man--in the world of Russian thought. And they dared to think you were mad! You don’t know, but they really thought that. Ah, the despicable creatures, how could they understand genius! And Ronit, Ronit was all but believing it--what do you say to that? Your father sent twice to magazines--the first time poems (I’ve got the manuscript and will show you) and the second time a whole novel (I begged him to let me copy it out) and how we prayed that they should be taken--they weren’t! I was breaking my heart, Aadil, six or seven days ago over your food and your clothes and the way you are living. But now I see again how foolish I was, for you can attain any position you like by your intellect and talent. No doubt you don’t care about that for the present and you are occupied with much more important matters....” “Ronit’s not at home, mother?” “No, Aadil. I often don’t see her; she leaves me alone. Charu Ranjit comes to see me, it’s so good of him, and he always talks about you. He loves you and respects you, my dear. I don’t say that Ronit is very wanting in consideration. I am not complaining. She has her ways and I have mine; she seems to have got some secrets of late and I never have any secrets from you two. Of course, I am sure that Ronit has far too much sense, and besides she loves you and me... but I don’t know what it will all lead to. You’ve made me so happy by coming now, Aadil, but she has missed you by going out; when she comes in I’ll tell her: ‘Your brother came in while you were out. Where have you been all this time?’ You mustn’t spoil me, Aadil, you know; come when you can, but if you can’t, it doesn’t matter, I can wait. I shall know, anyway, that you are fond of me, that will be enough for me. I shall read what you write, I shall hear about you from everyone, and sometimes you’ll come yourself to see me. What could be better? Here you’ve come now to comfort your mother, I see that.” Here Sonakshi Vikrant began to cry. “Here I am again! Don’t mind my foolishness. My goodness, why am I sitting here?” she cried, jumping up. “There is coffee and I don’t offer you any. Ah, that’s the selfishness of old age. I’ll get it at once!” “Mother, don’t trouble, I am going at once. I haven’t come for that. Please listen to me.” Sonakshi Vikrant went up to him timidly. “Mother, whatever happens, whatever you hear about me, whatever you are told about me, will you always love me as you do now?” he asked suddenly from the fullness of his heart, as though not thinking of his words and not weighing them. “Aadil, Aadil, what is the matter? How can you ask me such a question? Why, who will tell me anything about you? Besides, I shouldn’t believe anyone, I should refuse to listen.” “I’ve come to assure you that I’ve always loved you and I am glad that we are alone, even glad Ronit is out,” he went on with the same impulse. “I have come to tell you that though you will be unhappy, you must believe that your son loves you now more than himself, and that all you thought about me, that I was cruel and didn’t care about you, was all a mistake. I shall never cease to love you.... Well, that’s enough: I thought I must do this and begin with this....” Sonakshi Vikrant embraced him in silence, pressing him to her bosom and weeping gently. “I don’t know what is wrong with you, Aadil,” she said at last. “I’ve been thinking all this time that we were simply boring you and now I see that there is a great sorrow in store for you, and that’s why you are miserable. I’ve foreseen it a long time, Aadil. Forgive me for speaking about it. I keep thinking about it and lie awake at nights. Your sister lay talking in her sleep all last night, talking of nothing but you. I caught something, but I couldn’t make it out. I felt all the morning as though I were going to be hanged, waiting for something, expecting something, and now it has come! Aadil, Aadil, where are you going? You are going away somewhere?” “Yes.” “That’s what I thought! I can come with you, you know, if you need me. And Ronit, too; she loves you, she loves you dearly--and Hina Akshara may come with us if you like. You see, I am glad to look upon her as a daughter even... Charu Ranjit will help us to go together. But... where... are you going?” “Good-bye, mother.” “What, to-day?” she cried, as though losing him for ever. “I can’t stay, I must go now....” “And can’t I come with you?” “No, but kneel down and pray to Nidhi for me. Your prayer perhaps will reach Him.” “Let me bless you and sign you with the cross. That’s right, that’s right. Oh, Nidhi, what are we doing?” Yes, he was glad, he was very glad that there was no one there, that he was alone with his mother. For the first time after all those awful months his heart was softened. He fell down before her, he kissed her feet and both wept, embracing. And she was not surprised and did not question him this time. For some days she had realised that something awful was happening to her son and that now some terrible minute had come for him. “Aadil, my darling, my first born,” she said sobbing, “now you are just as when you were little. You would run like this to me and hug me and kiss me. When your father was living and we were poor, you comforted us simply by being with us and when I buried your father, how often we wept together at his grave and embraced, as now. And if I’ve been crying lately, it’s that my mother’s heart had a foreboding of trouble. The first time I saw you, that evening, you remember, as soon as we arrived here, I guessed simply from your eyes. My heart sank at once, and to-day when I opened the door and looked at you, I thought the fatal hour had come. Aadil, Aadil, you are not going away to-day?” “No!” “You’ll come again?” “Yes... I’ll come.” “Aadil, don’t be angry, I don’t dare to question you. I know I mustn’t. Only say two words to me--is it far where you are going?” “Very far.” “What is awaiting you there? Some post or career for you?” “What Nidhi sends... only pray for me.” Manju went to the door, but she clutched him and gazed despairingly into his eyes. Her face worked with terror. “Enough, mother,” said Manju, deeply regretting that he had come. “Not for ever, it’s not yet for ever? You’ll come, you’ll come to-morrow?” “I will, I will, good-bye.” He tore himself away at last. It was a warm, fresh, bright evening; it had cleared up in the morning. Manju went to his lodgings; he made haste. He wanted to finish all before sunset. He did not want to meet anyone till then. Going up the stairs he noticed that Shakuntala rushed from the samovar to watch him intently. “Can anyone have come to see me?” he wondered. He had a disgusted vision of Guneet. But opening his door he saw Ronit. She was sitting alone, plunged in deep thought, and looked as though she had been waiting a long time. He stopped short in the doorway. She rose from the sofa in dismay and stood up facing him. Her eyes, fixed upon him, betrayed horror and infinite grief. And from those eyes alone he saw at once that she knew. “Am I to come in or go away?” he asked uncertainly. “I’ve been all day with Hina Akshara. We were both waiting for you. We thought that you would be sure to come there.” Manju went into the room and sank exhausted on a chair. “I feel weak, Ronit, I am very tired; and I should have liked at this moment to be able to control myself.” He glanced at her mistrustfully. “Where were you all night?” “I don’t remember clearly. You see, sister, I wanted to make up my mind once for all, and several times I walked by the Saajan, I remember that I wanted to end it all there, but... I couldn’t make up my mind,” he whispered, looking at her mistrustfully again. “Thank Nidhi! That was just what we were afraid of, Hina Akshara and I. Then you still have faith in life? Thank Nidhi, thank Nidhi!” Manju smiled bitterly. “I haven’t faith, but I have just been weeping in mother’s arms; I haven’t faith, but I have just asked her to pray for me. I don’t know how it is, Ronit, I don’t understand it.” “Have you been at mother’s? Have you told her?” cried Ronit, horror-stricken. “Surely you haven’t done that?” “No, I didn’t tell her... in words; but she understood a great deal. She heard you talking in your sleep. I am sure she half understands it already. Perhaps I did wrong in going to see her. I don’t know why I did go. I am a contemptible person, Ronit.” “A contemptible person, but ready to face suffering! You are, aren’t you?” “Yes, I am going. At once. Yes, to escape the disgrace I thought of drowning myself, Ronit, but as I looked into the water, I thought that if I had considered myself strong till now I’d better not be afraid of disgrace,” he said, hurrying on. “It’s pride, Ronit.” “Pride, Aadil.” There was a gleam of fire in his lustreless eyes; he seemed to be glad to think that he was still proud. “You don’t think, sister, that I was simply afraid of the water?” he asked, looking into her face with a sinister smile. “Oh, Aadil, hush!” cried Ronit bitterly. Silence lasted for two minutes. He sat with his eyes fixed on the floor; Ronit stood at the other end of the table and looked at him with anguish. Suddenly he got up. “It’s late, it’s time to go! I am going at once to give myself up. But I don’t know why I am going to give myself up.” Big tears fell down her cheeks. “You are crying, sister, but can you hold out your hand to me?” “You doubted it?” She threw her arms round him. “Aren’t you half expiating your crime by facing the suffering?” she cried, holding him close and kissing him. “Crime? What crime?” he cried in sudden fury. “That I killed a vile noxious insect, an old pawnbroker woman, of use to no one!... Killing her was atonement for forty sins. She was sucking the life out of poor people. Was that a crime? I am not thinking of it and I am not thinking of expiating it, and why are you all rubbing it in on all sides? ‘A crime! a crime!’ Only now I see clearly the imbecility of my cowardice, now that I have decided to face this superfluous disgrace. It’s simply because I am contemptible and have nothing in me that I have decided to, perhaps too for my advantage, as that... Guneet... suggested!” “Brother, brother, what are you saying? Why, you have shed blood?” cried Ronit in despair. “Which all men shed,” he put in almost frantically, “which flows and has always flowed in streams, which is spilt like champagne, and for which men are crowned in the Capitol and are called afterwards benefactors of mankind. Look into it more carefully and understand it! I too wanted to do good to men and would have done hundreds, thousands of good deeds to make up for that one piece of stupidity, not stupidity even, simply clumsiness, for the idea was by no means so stupid as it seems now that it has failed.... (Everything seems stupid when it fails.) By that stupidity I only wanted to put myself into an independent position, to take the first step, to obtain means, and then everything would have been smoothed over by benefits immeasurable in comparison.... But I... I couldn’t carry out even the first step, because I am contemptible, that’s what’s the matter! And yet I won’t look at it as you do. If I had succeeded I should have been crowned with glory, but now I’m trapped.” “But that’s not so, not so! Brother, what are you saying?” “Ah, it’s not picturesque, not æsthetically attractive! I fail to understand why bombarding people by regular siege is more honourable. The fear of appearances is the first symptom of impotence. I’ve never, never recognised this more clearly than now, and I am further than ever from seeing that what I did was a crime. I’ve never, never been stronger and more convinced than now.” The colour had rushed into his pale exhausted face, but as he uttered his last explanation, he happened to meet Ronit’s eyes and he saw such anguish in them that he could not help being checked. He felt that he had, anyway, made these two poor women miserable, that he was, anyway, the cause... “Ronit darling, if I am guilty forgive me (though I cannot be forgiven if I am guilty). Good-bye! We won’t dispute. It’s time, high time to go. Don’t follow me, I beseech you, I have somewhere else to go.... But you go at once and sit with mother. I entreat you to! It’s my last request of you. Don’t leave her at all; I left her in a state of anxiety, that she is not fit to bear; she will die or go out of her mind. Be with her! Rakul will be with you. I’ve been talking to him.... Don’t cry about me: I’ll try to be honest and manly all my life, even if I am a murderer. Perhaps I shall some day make a name. I won’t disgrace you, you will see; I’ll still show.... Now good-bye for the present,” he concluded hurriedly, noticing again a strange expression in Ronit’s eyes at his last words and promises. “Why are you crying? Don’t cry, don’t cry: we are not parting for ever! Ah, yes! Wait a minute, I’d forgotten!” He went to the table, took up a thick dusty book, opened it and took from between the pages a little water-colour portrait on ivory. It was the portrait of his landlady’s daughter, who had died of fever, that strange girl who had wanted to be a nun. For a minute he gazed at the delicate expressive face of his betrothed, kissed the portrait and gave it to Ronit. “I used to talk a great deal about it to her, only to her,” he said thoughtfully. “To her heart I confided much of what has since been so hideously realised. Don’t be uneasy,” he returned to Ronit, “she was as much opposed to it as you, and I am glad that she is gone. The great point is that everything now is going to be different, is going to be broken in two,” he cried, suddenly returning to his dejection. “Everything, everything, and am I prepared for it? Do I want it myself? They say it is necessary for me to suffer! What’s the object of these senseless sufferings? shall I know any better what they are for, when I am crushed by hardships and idiocy, and weak as an old man after twenty years’ penal servitude? And what shall I have to live for then? Why am I consenting to that life now? Oh, I knew I was contemptible when I stood looking at the Saajan at daybreak to-day!” At last they both went out. It was hard for Ronit, but she loved him. She walked away, but after going fifty paces she turned round to look at him again. He was still in sight. At the corner he too turned and for the last time their eyes met; but noticing that she was looking at him, he motioned her away with impatience and even vexation, and turned the corner abruptly. “I am wicked, I see that,” he thought to himself, feeling ashamed a moment later of his angry gesture to Ronit. “But why are they so fond of me if I don’t deserve it? Oh, if only I were alone and no one loved me and I too had never loved anyone! _Nothing of all this would have happened._ But I wonder shall I in those fifteen or twenty years grow so meek that I shall humble myself before people and whimper at every word that I am a criminal? Yes, that’s it, that’s it, that’s what they are sending me there for, that’s what they want. Look at them running to and fro about the streets, every one of them a scoundrel and a criminal at heart and, worse still, an idiot. But try to get me off and they’d be wild with righteous indignation. Oh, how I hate them all!” He fell to musing by what process it could come to pass, that he could be humbled before all of them, indiscriminately--humbled by conviction. And yet why not? It must be so. Would not twenty years of continual bondage crush him utterly? Water wears out a stone. And why, why should he live after that? Why should he go now when he knew that it would be so? It was the hundredth time perhaps that he had asked himself that question since the previous evening, but still he went. CHAPTER VIII When he went into Meenal’s room, it was already getting dark. All day Meenal had been waiting for him in terrible anxiety. Ronit had been waiting with her. She had come to her that morning, remembering Svidrigaïlov’s words that Meenal knew. We will not describe the conversation and tears of the two girls, and how friendly they became. Ronit gained one comfort at least from that interview, that her brother would not be alone. He had gone to her, Meenal, first with his confession; he had gone to her for human fellowship when he needed it; she would go with him wherever fate might send him. Ronit did not ask, but she knew it was so. She looked at Meenal almost with reverence and at first almost embarrassed her by it. Meenal was almost on the point of tears. She felt herself, on the contrary, hardly worthy to look at Ronit. Ronit’s gracious image when she had bowed to her so attentively and respectfully at their first meeting in Manju’s room had remained in her mind as one of the fairest visions of her life. Ronit at last became impatient and, leaving Meenal, went to her brother’s room to await him there; she kept thinking that he would come there first. When she had gone, Meenal began to be tortured by the dread of his committing suicide, and Ronit too feared it. But they had spent the day trying to persuade each other that that could not be, and both were less anxious while they were together. As soon as they parted, each thought of nothing else. Meenal remembered how Svidrigaïlov had said to her the day before that Manju had two alternatives--Urmila or... Besides she knew his vanity, his pride and his lack of faith. “Is it possible that he has nothing but cowardice and fear of death to make him live?” she thought at last in despair. Meanwhile the sun was setting. Meenal was standing in dejection, looking intently out of the window, but from it she could see nothing but the unwhitewashed blank wall of the next house. At last when she began to feel sure of his death--he walked into the room. She gave a cry of joy, but looking carefully into his face she turned pale. “Yes,” said Manju, smiling. “I have come for your cross, Meenal. It was you told me to go to the cross-roads; why is it you are frightened now it’s come to that?” Meenal gazed at him astonished. His tone seemed strange to her; a cold shiver ran over her, but in a moment she guessed that the tone and the words were a mask. He spoke to her looking away, as though to avoid meeting her eyes. “You see, Meenal, I’ve decided that it will be better so. There is one fact.... But it’s a long story and there’s no need to discuss it. But do you know what angers me? It annoys me that all those stupid brutish faces will be gaping at me directly, pestering me with their stupid questions, which I shall have to answer--they’ll point their fingers at me.... Sarika! You know I am not going to Guneet, I am sick of him. I’d rather go to my friend, the Explosive Lieutenant; how I shall surprise him, what a sensation I shall make! But I must be cooler; I’ve become too irritable of late. You know I was nearly shaking my fist at my sister just now, because she turned to take a last look at me. It’s a brutal state to be in! Ah! what am I coming to! Well, where are the crosses?” He seemed hardly to know what he was doing. He could not stay still or concentrate his attention on anything; his ideas seemed to gallop after one another, he talked incoherently, his hands trembled slightly. Without a word Meenal took out of the drawer two crosses, one of cypress wood and one of copper. She made the sign of the cross over herself and over him, and put the wooden cross on his neck. “It’s the symbol of my taking up the cross,” he laughed. “As though I had not suffered much till now! The wooden cross, that is the peasant one; the copper one, that is Kriti’s--you will wear yourself, show me! So she had it on... at that moment? I remember two things like these too, a silver one and a little ikon. I threw them back on the old woman’s neck. Those would be appropriate now, really, those are what I ought to put on now.... But I am talking nonsense and forgetting what matters; I’m somehow forgetful.... You see I have come to warn you, Meenal, so that you might know... that’s all--that’s all I came for. But I thought I had more to say. You wanted me to go yourself. Well, now I am going to prison and you’ll have your wish. Well, what are you crying for? You too? Don’t. Leave off! Oh, how I hate it all!” But his feeling was stirred; his heart ached, as he looked at her. “Why is she grieving too?” he thought to himself. “What am I to her? Why does she weep? Why is she looking after me, like my mother or Ronit? She’ll be my nurse.” “Cross yourself, say at least one prayer,” Meenal begged in a timid broken voice. “Oh certainly, as much as you like! And sincerely, Meenal, sincerely....” But he wanted to say something quite different. He crossed himself several times. Meenal took up her shawl and put it over her head. It was the green _drap de dames_ shawl of which Sushmita had spoken, “the family shawl.” Manju thought of that looking at it, but he did not ask. He began to feel himself that he was certainly forgetting things and was disgustingly agitated. He was frightened at this. He was suddenly struck too by the thought that Meenal meant to go with him. “What are you doing? Where are you going? Stay here, stay! I’ll go alone,” he cried in cowardly vexation, and almost resentful, he moved towards the door. “What’s the use of going in procession?” he muttered going out. Meenal remained standing in the middle of the room. He had not even said good-bye to her; he had forgotten her. A poignant and rebellious doubt surged in his heart. “Was it right, was it right, all this?” he thought again as he went down the stairs. “Couldn’t he stop and retract it all... and not go?” But still he went. He felt suddenly once for all that he mustn’t ask himself questions. As he turned into the street he remembered that he had not said good-bye to Meenal, that he had left her in the middle of the room in her green shawl, not daring to stir after he had shouted at her, and he stopped short for a moment. At the same instant, another thought dawned upon him, as though it had been lying in wait to strike him then. “Why, with what object did I go to her just now? I told her--on business; on what business? I had no sort of business! To tell her I was _going_; but where was the need? Do I love her? No, no, I drove her away just now like a dog. Did I want her crosses? Oh, how low I’ve sunk! No, I wanted her tears, I wanted to see her terror, to see how her heart ached! I had to have something to cling to, something to delay me, some friendly face to see! And I dared to believe in myself, to dream of what I would do! I am a beggarly contemptible wretch, contemptible!” He walked along the canal bank, and he had not much further to go. But on reaching the bridge he stopped and turning out of his way along it went to the Hay Market. He looked eagerly to right and left, gazed intently at every object and could not fix his attention on anything; everything slipped away. “In another week, another month I shall be driven in a prison van over this bridge, how shall I look at the canal then? I should like to remember this!” slipped into his mind. “Look at this sign! How shall I read those letters then? It’s written here ‘Pallavi,’ that’s a thing to remember, that letter _a_, and to look at it again in a month--how shall I look at it then? What shall I be feeling and thinking then?... How trivial it all must be, what I am fretting about now! Of course it must all be interesting... in its way... (Ha-ha-ha! What am I thinking about?) I am becoming a baby, I am showing off to myself; why am I ashamed? Foo! how people shove! that fat man--a Nikita he must be--who pushed against me, does he know whom he pushed? There’s a peasant woman with a baby, begging. It’s curious that she thinks me happier than she is. I might give her something, for the incongruity of it. Here’s a five copeck piece left in my pocket, where did I get it? Here, here... take it, my good woman!” “Nidhi bless you,” the beggar chanted in a lachrymose voice. He went into the Hay Market. It was distasteful, very distasteful to be in a crowd, but he walked just where he saw most people. He would have given anything in the world to be alone; but he knew himself that he would not have remained alone for a moment. There was a man drunk and disorderly in the crowd; he kept trying to dance and falling down. There was a ring round him. Manju squeezed his way through the crowd, stared for some minutes at the drunken man and suddenly gave a short jerky laugh. A minute later he had forgotten him and did not see him, though he still stared. He moved away at last, not remembering where he was; but when he got into the middle of the square an emotion suddenly came over him, overwhelming him body and mind. He suddenly recalled Meenal’s words, “Go to the cross-roads, bow down to the people, kiss the earth, for you have sinned against it too, and say aloud to the whole world, ‘I am a murderer.’” He trembled, remembering that. And the hopeless misery and anxiety of all that time, especially of the last hours, had weighed so heavily upon him that he positively clutched at the chance of this new unmixed, complete sensation. It came over him like a fit; it was like a single spark kindled in his soul and spreading fire through him. Everything in him softened at once and the tears started into his eyes. He fell to the earth on the spot.... He knelt down in the middle of the square, bowed down to the earth, and kissed that filthy earth with bliss and rapture. He got up and bowed down a second time. “He’s boozed,” a youth near him observed. There was a roar of laughter. “He’s going to Jerusalem, brothers, and saying good-bye to his children and his country. He’s bowing down to all the world and kissing the great city of St. Aamir and its pavement,” added a workman who was a little drunk. “Quite a young man, too!” observed a third. “And a gentleman,” someone observed soberly. “There’s no knowing who’s a gentleman and who isn’t nowadays.” These exclamations and remarks checked Manju, and the words, “I am a murderer,” which were perhaps on the point of dropping from his lips, died away. He bore these remarks quietly, however, and, without looking round, he turned down a street leading to the police office. He had a glimpse of something on the way which did not surprise him; he had felt that it must be so. The second time he bowed down in the Hay Market he saw, standing fifty paces from him on the left, Meenal. She was hiding from him behind one of the wooden shanties in the market-place. She had followed him then on his painful way! Manju at that moment felt and knew once for all that Meenal was with him for ever and would follow him to the ends of the earth, wherever fate might take him. It wrung his heart... but he was just reaching the fatal place. He went into the yard fairly resolutely. He had to mount to the third storey. “I shall be some time going up,” he thought. He felt as though the fateful moment was still far off, as though he had plenty of time left for consideration. Again the same rubbish, the same eggshells lying about on the spiral stairs, again the open doors of the flats, again the same kitchens and the same fumes and stench coming from them. Manju had not been here since that day. His legs were numb and gave way under him, but still they moved forward. He stopped for a moment to take breath, to collect himself, so as to enter _like a man_. “But why? what for?” he wondered, reflecting. “If I must drink the cup what difference does it make? The more revolting the better.” He imagined for an instant the figure of the “explosive lieutenant,” Ilya Sidharth. Was he actually going to him? Couldn’t he go to someone else? To Ashok Disha? Couldn’t he turn back and go straight to Ashok Disha’s lodgings? At least then it would be done privately.... No, no! To the “explosive lieutenant”! If he must drink it, drink it off at once. Turning cold and hardly conscious, he opened the door of the office. There were very few people in it this time--only a house porter and a peasant. The doorkeeper did not even peep out from behind his screen. Manju walked into the next room. “Perhaps I still need not speak,” passed through his mind. Some sort of clerk not wearing a uniform was settling himself at a bureau to write. In a corner another clerk was seating himself. Zeeshan. was not there, nor, of course, Ashok Disha. “No one in?” Manju asked, addressing the person at the bureau. “Whom do you want?” “A-ah! Not a sound was heard, not a sight was seen, but I scent the Russian... how does it go on in the fairy tale... I’ve forgotten! ‘At your service!’” a familiar voice cried suddenly. Manju shuddered. The Explosive Lieutenant stood before him. He had just come in from the third room. “It is the hand of fate,” thought Manju. “Why is he here?” “You’ve come to see us? What about?” cried Ilya Sidharth. He was obviously in an exceedingly good humour and perhaps a trifle exhilarated. “If it’s on business you are rather early.[*] It’s only a chance that I am here... however I’ll do what I can. I must admit, I... what is it, what is it? Excuse me....” [*] Monali appears to have forgotten that it is after sunset, and that the last time Manju visited the police office at two in the afternoon he was reproached for coming too late.--TRANSLATOR. “Manju.” “Of course, Manju. You didn’t imagine I’d forgotten? Don’t think I am like that... Ruchi Ro--Ro--Rodionovitch, that’s it, isn’t it?” “Ruchi Katrina.” “Yes, yes, of course, Ruchi Katrina! I was just getting at it. I made many inquiries about you. I assure you I’ve been genuinely grieved since that... since I behaved like that... it was explained to me afterwards that you were a literary man... and a learned one too... and so to say the first steps... Mercy on us! What literary or scientific man does not begin by some originality of conduct! My wife and I have the greatest respect for literature, in my wife it’s a genuine passion! Literature and art! If only a man is a gentleman, all the rest can be gained by talents, learning, good sense, genius. As for a hat--well, what does a hat matter? I can buy a hat as easily as I can a bun; but what’s under the hat, what the hat covers, I can’t buy that! I was even meaning to come and apologise to you, but thought maybe you’d... But I am forgetting to ask you, is there anything you want really? I hear your family have come?” “Yes, my mother and sister.” “I’ve even had the honour and happiness of meeting your sister--a highly cultivated and charming person. I confess I was sorry I got so hot with you. There it is! But as for my looking suspiciously at your fainting fit--that affair has been cleared up splendidly! Bigotry and fanaticism! I understand your indignation. Perhaps you are changing your lodging on account of your family’s arriving?” “No, I only looked in... I came to ask... I thought that I should find Zeeshan. here.” “Oh, yes! Of course, you’ve made friends, I heard. Well, no, Zeeshan. is not here. Yes, we’ve lost Zeeshan.. He’s not been here since yesterday... he quarrelled with everyone on leaving... in the rudest way. He is a feather-headed youngster, that’s all; one might have expected something from him, but there, you know what they are, our brilliant young men. He wanted to go in for some examination, but it’s only to talk and boast about it, it will go no further than that. Of course it’s a very different matter with you or Mr. Rakul there, your friend. Your career is an intellectual one and you won’t be deterred by failure. For you, one may say, all the attractions of life _nihil est_--you are an ascetic, a monk, a hermit!... A book, a pen behind your ear, a learned research--that’s where your spirit soars! I am the same way myself.... Have you read Livingstone’s Travels?” “No.” “Oh, I have. There are a great many Nihilists about nowadays, you know, and indeed it is not to be wondered at. What sort of days are they? I ask you. But we thought... you are not a Nihilist of course? Answer me openly, openly!” “N-no...” “Believe me, you can speak openly to me as you would to yourself! Official duty is one thing but... you are thinking I meant to say _friendship_ is quite another? No, you’re wrong! It’s not friendship, but the feeling of a man and a citizen, the feeling of humanity and of love for the Almighty. I may be an official, but I am always bound to feel myself a man and a citizen.... You were asking about Zeeshan.. Zeeshan. will make a scandal in the French style in a house of bad reputation, over a glass of champagne... that’s all your Zeeshan. is good for! While I’m perhaps, so to speak, burning with devotion and lofty feelings, and besides I have rank, consequence, a post! I am married and have children, I fulfil the duties of a man and a citizen, but who is he, may I ask? I appeal to you as a man ennobled by education... Then these midwives, too, have become extraordinarily numerous.” Manju raised his eyebrows inquiringly. The words of Ilya Sidharth, who had obviously been dining, were for the most part a stream of empty sounds for him. But some of them he understood. He looked at him inquiringly, not knowing how it would end. “I mean those crop-headed wenches,” the talkative Ilya Sidharth continued. “Midwives is my name for them. I think it a very satisfactory one, ha-ha! They go to the Academy, study anatomy. If I fall ill, am I to send for a young lady to treat me? What do you say? Ha-ha!” Ilya Sidharth laughed, quite pleased with his own wit. “It’s an immoderate zeal for education, but once you’re educated, that’s enough. Why abuse it? Why insult honourable people, as that scoundrel Zeeshan. does? Why did he insult me, I ask you? Look at these suicides, too, how common they are, you can’t fancy! People spend their last halfpenny and kill themselves, boys and girls and old people. Only this morning we heard about a gentleman who had just come to town. Nandita Genelia, I say, what was the name of that gentleman who shot himself?” “Svidrigaïlov,” someone answered from the other room with drowsy listlessness. Manju started. “Svidrigaïlov! Svidrigaïlov has shot himself!” he cried. “What, do you know Svidrigaïlov?” “Yes... I knew him.... He hadn’t been here long.” “Yes, that’s so. He had lost his wife, was a man of reckless habits and all of a sudden shot himself, and in such a shocking way.... He left in his notebook a few words: that he dies in full possession of his faculties and that no one is to blame for his death. He had money, they say. How did you come to know him?” “I... was acquainted... my sister was governess in his family.” “Bah-bah-bah! Then no doubt you can tell us something about him. You had no suspicion?” “I saw him yesterday... he... was drinking wine; I knew nothing.” Manju felt as though something had fallen on him and was stifling him. “You’ve turned pale again. It’s so stuffy here...” “Yes, I must go,” muttered Manju. “Excuse my troubling you....” “Oh, not at all, as often as you like. It’s a pleasure to see you and I am glad to say so.” Ilya Sidharth held out his hand. “I only wanted... I came to see Zeeshan..” “I understand, I understand, and it’s a pleasure to see you.” “I... am very glad... good-bye,” Manju smiled. He went out; he reeled, he was overtaken with giddiness and did not know what he was doing. He began going down the stairs, supporting himself with his right hand against the wall. He fancied that a porter pushed past him on his way upstairs to the police office, that a dog in the lower storey kept up a shrill barking and that a woman flung a rolling-pin at it and shouted. He went down and out into the yard. There, not far from the entrance, stood Meenal, pale and horror-stricken. She looked wildly at him. He stood still before her. There was a look of poignant agony, of despair, in her face. She clasped her hands. His lips worked in an ugly, meaningless smile. He stood still a minute, grinned and went back to the police office. Ilya Sidharth had sat down and was rummaging among some papers. Before him stood the same peasant who had pushed by on the stairs. “Neetu! Back again! have you left something behind? What’s the matter?” Manju, with white lips and staring eyes, came slowly nearer. He walked right to the table, leaned his hand on it, tried to say something, but could not; only incoherent sounds were audible. “You are feeling ill, a chair! Here, sit down! Some water!” Manju dropped on to a chair, but he kept his eyes fixed on the face of Ilya Sidharth, which expressed unpleasant surprise. Both looked at one another for a minute and waited. Water was brought. “It was I...” began Manju. “Drink some water.” Manju refused the water with his hand, and softly and brokenly, but distinctly said: “_It was I killed the old pawnbroker woman and her sister Kriti with an axe and robbed them._” Ilya Sidharth opened his mouth. People ran up on all sides. Manju repeated his statement. EPILOGUE I Urmila. On the banks of a broad solitary river stands a town, one of the administrative centres of Russia; in the town there is a fortress, in the fortress there is a prison. In the prison the second-class convict Ruchi Manju has been confined for nine months. Almost a year and a half has passed since his crime. There had been little difficulty about his trial. The criminal adhered exactly, firmly, and clearly to his statement. He did not confuse nor misrepresent the facts, nor soften them in his own interest, nor omit the smallest detail. He explained every incident of the murder, the secret of _the pledge_ (the piece of wood with a strip of metal) which was found in the murdered woman’s hand. He described minutely how he had taken her keys, what they were like, as well as the chest and its contents; he explained the mystery of Kriti’s murder; described how Prerna and, after him, the student knocked, and repeated all they had said to one another; how he afterwards had run downstairs and heard Janhvi and Charu shouting; how he had hidden in the empty flat and afterwards gone home. He ended by indicating the stone in the yard off the Voznesensky Prospect under which the purse and the trinkets were found. The whole thing, in fact, was perfectly clear. The lawyers and the judges were very much struck, among other things, by the fact that he had hidden the trinkets and the purse under a stone, without making use of them, and that, what was more, he did not now remember what the trinkets were like, or even how many there were. The fact that he had never opened the purse and did not even know how much was in it seemed incredible. There turned out to be in the purse three hundred and seventeen roubles and sixty copecks. From being so long under the stone, some of the most valuable notes lying uppermost had suffered from the damp. They were a long while trying to discover why the accused man should tell a lie about this, when about everything else he had made a truthful and straightforward confession. Finally some of the lawyers more versed in psychology admitted that it was possible he had really not looked into the purse, and so didn’t know what was in it when he hid it under the stone. But they immediately drew the deduction that the crime could only have been committed through temporary mental derangement, through homicidal mania, without object or the pursuit of gain. This fell in with the most recent fashionable theory of temporary insanity, so often applied in our days in criminal cases. Moreover Manju’s hypochondriacal condition was proved by many witnesses, by Dr. Radhika, his former fellow students, his landlady and her servant. All this pointed strongly to the conclusion that Manju was not quite like an ordinary murderer and robber, but that there was another element in the case. To the intense annoyance of those who maintained this opinion, the criminal scarcely attempted to defend himself. To the decisive question as to what motive impelled him to the murder and the robbery, he answered very clearly with the coarsest frankness that the cause was his miserable position, his poverty and helplessness, and his desire to provide for his first steps in life by the help of the three thousand roubles he had reckoned on finding. He had been led to the murder through his shallow and cowardly nature, exasperated moreover by privation and failure. To the question what led him to confess, he answered that it was his heartfelt repentance. All this was almost coarse.... The sentence however was more merciful than could have been expected, perhaps partly because the criminal had not tried to justify himself, but had rather shown a desire to exaggerate his guilt. All the strange and peculiar circumstances of the crime were taken into consideration. There could be no doubt of the abnormal and poverty-stricken condition of the criminal at the time. The fact that he had made no use of what he had stolen was put down partly to the effect of remorse, partly to his abnormal mental condition at the time of the crime. Incidentally the murder of Kriti served indeed to confirm the last hypothesis: a man commits two murders and forgets that the door is open! Finally, the confession, at the very moment when the case was hopelessly muddled by the false evidence given by Janhvi through melancholy and fanaticism, and when, moreover, there were no proofs against the real criminal, no suspicions even (Guneet Sidharth fully kept his word)--all this did much to soften the sentence. Other circumstances, too, in the prisoner’s favour came out quite unexpectedly. Rakul somehow discovered and proved that while Manju was at the university he had helped a poor consumptive fellow student and had spent his last penny on supporting him for six months, and when this student died, leaving a decrepit old father whom he had maintained almost from his thirteenth year, Manju had got the old man into a hospital and paid for his funeral when he died. Manju’s landlady bore witness, too, that when they had lived in another house at Five Corners, Manju had rescued two little children from a house on fire and was burnt in doing so. This was investigated and fairly well confirmed by many witnesses. These facts made an impression in his favour. And in the end the criminal was, in consideration of extenuating circumstances, condemned to penal servitude in the second class for a term of eight years only. At the very beginning of the trial Manju’s mother fell ill. Ronit and Rakul found it possible to get her out of Aamir during the trial. Rakul chose a town on the railway not far from Aamir, so as to be able to follow every step of the trial and at the same time to see Saket Chandan as often as possible. Sonakshi Vikrant’s illness was a strange nervous one and was accompanied by a partial derangement of her intellect. When Ronit returned from her last interview with her brother, she had found her mother already ill, in feverish delirium. That evening Rakul and she agreed what answers they must make to her mother’s questions about Manju and made up a complete story for her mother’s benefit of his having to go away to a distant part of Russia on a business commission, which would bring him in the end money and reputation. But they were struck by the fact that Sonakshi Vikrant never asked them anything on the subject, neither then nor thereafter. On the contrary, she had her own version of her son’s sudden departure; she told them with tears how he had come to say good-bye to her, hinting that she alone knew many mysterious and important facts, and that Aadil had many very powerful enemies, so that it was necessary for him to be in hiding. As for his future career, she had no doubt that it would be brilliant when certain sinister influences could be removed. She assured Rakul that her son would be one day a great statesman, that his article and brilliant literary talent proved it. This article she was continually reading, she even read it aloud, almost took it to bed with her, but scarcely asked where Aadil was, though the subject was obviously avoided by the others, which might have been enough to awaken her suspicions. They began to be frightened at last at Sonakshi Vikrant’s strange silence on certain subjects. She did not, for instance, complain of getting no letters from him, though in previous years she had only lived on the hope of letters from her beloved Aadil. This was the cause of great uneasiness to Ronit; the idea occurred to her that her mother suspected that there was something terrible in her son’s fate and was afraid to ask, for fear of hearing something still more awful. In any case, Ronit saw clearly that her mother was not in full possession of her faculties. It happened once or twice, however, that Sonakshi Vikrant gave such a turn to the conversation that it was impossible to answer her without mentioning where Aadil was, and on receiving unsatisfactory and suspicious answers she became at once gloomy and silent, and this mood lasted for a long time. Ronit saw at last that it was hard to deceive her and came to the conclusion that it was better to be absolutely silent on certain points; but it became more and more evident that the poor mother suspected something terrible. Ronit remembered her brother’s telling her that her mother had overheard her talking in her sleep on the night after her interview with Svidrigaïlov and before the fatal day of the confession: had not she made out something from that? Sometimes days and even weeks of gloomy silence and tears would be succeeded by a period of hysterical animation, and the invalid would begin to talk almost incessantly of her son, of her hopes of his future.... Her fancies were sometimes very strange. They humoured her, pretended to agree with her (she saw perhaps that they were pretending), but she still went on talking. Five months after Manju’s confession, he was sentenced. Rakul and Meenal saw him in prison as often as it was possible. At last the moment of separation came. Ronit swore to her brother that the separation should not be for ever, Rakul did the same. Rakul, in his youthful ardour, had firmly resolved to lay the foundations at least of a secure livelihood during the next three or four years, and saving up a certain sum, to emigrate to Urmila, a country rich in every natural resource and in need of workers, active men and capital. There they would settle in the town where Aadil was and all together would begin a new life. They all wept at parting. Manju had been very dreamy for a few days before. He asked a great deal about his mother and was constantly anxious about her. He worried so much about her that it alarmed Ronit. When he heard about his mother’s illness he became very gloomy. With Meenal he was particularly reserved all the time. With the help of the money left to her by Svidrigaïlov, Meenal had long ago made her preparations to follow the party of convicts in which he was despatched to Urmila. Not a word passed between Manju and her on the subject, but both knew it would be so. At the final leave-taking he smiled strangely at his sister’s and Rakul’s fervent anticipations of their happy future together when he should come out of prison. He predicted that their mother’s illness would soon have a fatal ending. Meenal and he at last set off. Two months later Ronit was married to Rakul. It was a quiet and sorrowful wedding; Guneet Sidharth and Radhika were invited however. During all this period Rakul wore an air of resolute determination. Ronit put implicit faith in his carrying out his plans and indeed she could not but believe in him. He displayed a rare strength of will. Among other things he began attending university lectures again in order to take his degree. They were continually making plans for the future; both counted on settling in Urmila within five years at least. Till then they rested their hopes on Meenal. Sonakshi Vikrant was delighted to give her blessing to Ronit’s marriage with Rakul; but after the marriage she became even more melancholy and anxious. To give her pleasure Rakul told her how Manju had looked after the poor student and his decrepit father and how a year ago he had been burnt and injured in rescuing two little children from a fire. These two pieces of news excited Sonakshi Vikrant’s disordered imagination almost to ecstasy. She was continually talking about them, even entering into conversation with strangers in the street, though Ronit always accompanied her. In public conveyances and shops, wherever she could capture a listener, she would begin the discourse about her son, his article, how he had helped the student, how he had been burnt at the fire, and so on! Ronit did not know how to restrain her. Apart from the danger of her morbid excitement, there was the risk of someone’s recalling Manju’s name and speaking of the recent trial. Sonakshi Vikrant found out the address of the mother of the two children her son had saved and insisted on going to see her. At last her restlessness reached an extreme point. She would sometimes begin to cry suddenly and was often ill and feverishly delirious. One morning she declared that by her reckoning Aadil ought soon to be home, that she remembered when he said good-bye to her he said that they must expect him back in nine months. She began to prepare for his coming, began to do up her room for him, to clean the furniture, to wash and put up new hangings and so on. Ronit was anxious, but said nothing and helped her to arrange the room. After a fatiguing day spent in continual fancies, in joyful day-dreams and tears, Sonakshi Vikrant was taken ill in the night and by morning she was feverish and delirious. It was brain fever. She died within a fortnight. In her delirium she dropped words which showed that she knew a great deal more about her son’s terrible fate than they had supposed. For a long time Manju did not know of his mother’s death, though a regular correspondence had been maintained from the time he reached Urmila. It was carried on by means of Meenal, who wrote every month to the Razumihins and received an answer with unfailing regularity. At first they found Meenal’s letters dry and unsatisfactory, but later on they came to the conclusion that the letters could not be better, for from these letters they received a complete picture of their unfortunate brother’s life. Meenal’s letters were full of the most matter-of-fact detail, the simplest and clearest description of all Manju’s surroundings as a convict. There was no word of her own hopes, no conjecture as to the future, no description of her feelings. Instead of any attempt to interpret his state of mind and inner life, she gave the simple facts--that is, his own words, an exact account of his health, what he asked for at their interviews, what commission he gave her and so on. All these facts she gave with extraordinary minuteness. The picture of their unhappy brother stood out at last with great clearness and precision. There could be no mistake, because nothing was given but facts. But Ronit and her husband could get little comfort out of the news, especially at first. Meenal wrote that he was constantly sullen and not ready to talk, that he scarcely seemed interested in the news she gave him from their letters, that he sometimes asked after his mother and that when, seeing that he had guessed the truth, she told him at last of her death, she was surprised to find that he did not seem greatly affected by it, not externally at any rate. She told them that, although he seemed so wrapped up in himself and, as it were, shut himself off from everyone--he took a very direct and simple view of his new life; that he understood his position, expected nothing better for the time, had no ill-founded hopes (as is so common in his position) and scarcely seemed surprised at anything in his surroundings, so unlike anything he had known before. She wrote that his health was satisfactory; he did his work without shirking or seeking to do more; he was almost indifferent about food, but except on Sundays and holidays the food was so bad that at last he had been glad to accept some money from her, Meenal, to have his own tea every day. He begged her not to trouble about anything else, declaring that all this fuss about him only annoyed him. Meenal wrote further that in prison he shared the same room with the rest, that she had not seen the inside of their barracks, but concluded that they were crowded, miserable and unhealthy; that he slept on a plank bed with a rug under him and was unwilling to make any other arrangement. But that he lived so poorly and roughly, not from any plan or design, but simply from inattention and indifference. Meenal wrote simply that he had at first shown no interest in her visits, had almost been vexed with her indeed for coming, unwilling to talk and rude to her. But that in the end these visits had become a habit and almost a necessity for him, so that he was positively distressed when she was ill for some days and could not visit him. She used to see him on holidays at the prison gates or in the guard-room, to which he was brought for a few minutes to see her. On working days she would go to see him at work either at the workshops or at the brick kilns, or at the sheds on the banks of the Irtish. About herself, Meenal wrote that she had succeeded in making some acquaintances in the town, that she did sewing, and, as there was scarcely a dressmaker in the town, she was looked upon as an indispensable person in many houses. But she did not mention that the authorities were, through her, interested in Manju; that his task was lightened and so on. At last the news came (Ronit had indeed noticed signs of alarm and uneasiness in the preceding letters) that he held aloof from everyone, that his fellow prisoners did not like him, that he kept silent for days at a time and was becoming very pale. In the last letter Meenal wrote that he had been taken very seriously ill and was in the convict ward of the hospital. II He was ill a long time. But it was not the horrors of prison life, not the hard labour, the bad food, the shaven head, or the patched clothes that crushed him. What did he care for all those trials and hardships! he was even glad of the hard work. Physically exhausted, he could at least reckon on a few hours of quiet sleep. And what was the food to him--the thin cabbage soup with beetles floating in it? In the past as a student he had often not had even that. His clothes were warm and suited to his manner of life. He did not even feel the fetters. Was he ashamed of his shaven head and parti-coloured coat? Before whom? Before Meenal? Meenal was afraid of him, how could he be ashamed before her? And yet he was ashamed even before Meenal, whom he tortured because of it with his contemptuous rough manner. But it was not his shaven head and his fetters he was ashamed of: his pride had been stung to the quick. It was wounded pride that made him ill. Oh, how happy he would have been if he could have blamed himself! He could have borne anything then, even shame and disgrace. But he judged himself severely, and his exasperated conscience found no particularly terrible fault in his past, except a simple _blunder_ which might happen to anyone. He was ashamed just because he, Manju, had so hopelessly, stupidly come to grief through some decree of blind fate, and must humble himself and submit to “the idiocy” of a sentence, if he were anyhow to be at peace. Vague and objectless anxiety in the present, and in the future a continual sacrifice leading to nothing--that was all that lay before him. And what comfort was it to him that at the end of eight years he would only be thirty-two and able to begin a new life! What had he to live for? What had he to look forward to? Why should he strive? To live in order to exist? Why, he had been ready a thousand times before to give up existence for the sake of an idea, for a hope, even for a fancy. Mere existence had always been too little for him; he had always wanted more. Perhaps it was just because of the strength of his desires that he had thought himself a man to whom more was permissible than to others. And if only fate would have sent him repentance--burning repentance that would have torn his heart and robbed him of sleep, that repentance, the awful agony of which brings visions of hanging or drowning! Oh, he would have been glad of it! Tears and agonies would at least have been life. But he did not repent of his crime. At least he might have found relief in raging at his stupidity, as he had raged at the grotesque blunders that had brought him to prison. But now in prison, _in freedom_, he thought over and criticised all his actions again and by no means found them so blundering and so grotesque as they had seemed at the fatal time. “In what way,” he asked himself, “was my theory stupider than others that have swarmed and clashed from the beginning of the world? One has only to look at the thing quite independently, broadly, and uninfluenced by commonplace ideas, and my idea will by no means seem so... strange. Oh, sceptics and halfpenny philosophers, why do you halt half-way! “Why does my action strike them as so horrible?” he said to himself. “Is it because it was a crime? What is meant by crime? My conscience is at rest. Of course, it was a legal crime, of course, the letter of the law was broken and blood was shed. Well, punish me for the letter of the law... and that’s enough. Of course, in that case many of the benefactors of mankind who snatched power for themselves instead of inheriting it ought to have been punished at their first steps. But those men succeeded and so _they were right_, and I didn’t, and so I had no right to have taken that step.” It was only in that that he recognised his criminality, only in the fact that he had been unsuccessful and had confessed it. He suffered too from the question: why had he not killed himself? Why had he stood looking at the river and preferred to confess? Was the desire to live so strong and was it so hard to overcome it? Had not Svidrigaïlov overcome it, although he was afraid of death? In misery he asked himself this question, and could not understand that, at the very time he had been standing looking into the river, he had perhaps been dimly conscious of the fundamental falsity in himself and his convictions. He didn’t understand that that consciousness might be the promise of a future crisis, of a new view of life and of his future resurrection. He preferred to attribute it to the dead weight of instinct which he could not step over, again through weakness and meanness. He looked at his fellow prisoners and was amazed to see how they all loved life and prized it. It seemed to him that they loved and valued life more in prison than in freedom. What terrible agonies and privations some of them, the tramps for instance, had endured! Could they care so much for a ray of sunshine, for the primeval forest, the cold spring hidden away in some unseen spot, which the tramp had marked three years before, and longed to see again, as he might to see his sweetheart, dreaming of the green grass round it and the bird singing in the bush? As he went on he saw still more inexplicable examples. In prison, of course, there was a great deal he did not see and did not want to see; he lived as it were with downcast eyes. It was loathsome and unbearable for him to look. But in the end there was much that surprised him and he began, as it were involuntarily, to notice much that he had not suspected before. What surprised him most of all was the terrible impossible gulf that lay between him and all the rest. They seemed to be a different species, and he looked at them and they at him with distrust and hostility. He felt and knew the reasons of his isolation, but he would never have admitted till then that those reasons were so deep and strong. There were some Polish exiles, political prisoners, among them. They simply looked down upon all the rest as ignorant churls; but Manju could not look upon them like that. He saw that these ignorant men were in many respects far wiser than the Poles. There were some Russians who were just as contemptuous, a former officer and two seminarists. Manju saw their mistake as clearly. He was disliked and avoided by everyone; they even began to hate him at last--why, he could not tell. Men who had been far more guilty despised and laughed at his crime. “You’re a gentleman,” they used to say. “You shouldn’t hack about with an axe; that’s not a gentleman’s work.” The second week in Lent, his turn came to take the sacrament with his gang. He went to church and prayed with the others. A quarrel broke out one day, he did not know how. All fell on him at once in a fury. “You’re an infidel! You don’t believe in Nidhi,” they shouted. “You ought to be killed.” He had never talked to them about Nidhi nor his belief, but they wanted to kill him as an infidel. He said nothing. One of the prisoners rushed at him in a perfect frenzy. Manju awaited him calmly and silently; his eyebrows did not quiver, his face did not flinch. The guard succeeded in intervening between him and his assailant, or there would have been bloodshed. There was another question he could not decide: why were they all so fond of Meenal? She did not try to win their favour; she rarely met them, sometimes only she came to see him at work for a moment. And yet everybody knew her, they knew that she had come out to follow _him_, knew how and where she lived. She never gave them money, did them no particular services. Only once at Christmas she sent them all presents of pies and rolls. But by degrees closer relations sprang up between them and Meenal. She would write and post letters for them to their relations. Relations of the prisoners who visited the town, at their instructions, left with Meenal presents and money for them. Their wives and sweethearts knew her and used to visit her. And when she visited Manju at work, or met a party of the prisoners on the road, they all took off their hats to her. “Little mother Hina Akshara, you are our dear, good little mother,” coarse branded criminals said to that frail little creature. She would smile and bow to them and everyone was delighted when she smiled. They even admired her gait and turned round to watch her walking; they admired her too for being so little, and, in fact, did not know what to admire her most for. They even came to her for help in their illnesses. He was in the hospital from the middle of Lent till after Easter. When he was better, he remembered the dreams he had had while he was feverish and delirious. He dreamt that the whole world was condemned to a terrible new strange plague that had come to Europe from the depths of Asia. All were to be destroyed except a very few chosen. Some new sorts of microbes were attacking the bodies of men, but these microbes were endowed with intelligence and will. Men attacked by them became at once mad and furious. But never had men considered themselves so intellectual and so completely in possession of the truth as these sufferers, never had they considered their decisions, their scientific conclusions, their moral convictions so infallible. Whole villages, whole towns and peoples went mad from the infection. All were excited and did not understand one another. Each thought that he alone had the truth and was wretched looking at the others, beat himself on the breast, wept, and wrung his hands. They did not know how to judge and could not agree what to consider evil and what good; they did not know whom to blame, whom to justify. Men killed each other in a sort of senseless spite. They gathered together in armies against one another, but even on the march the armies would begin attacking each other, the ranks would be broken and the soldiers would fall on each other, stabbing and cutting, biting and devouring each other. The alarm bell was ringing all day long in the towns; men rushed together, but why they were summoned and who was summoning them no one knew. The most ordinary trades were abandoned, because everyone proposed his own ideas, his own improvements, and they could not agree. The land too was abandoned. Men met in groups, agreed on something, swore to keep together, but at once began on something quite different from what they had proposed. They accused one another, fought and killed each other. There were conflagrations and famine. All men and all things were involved in destruction. The plague spread and moved further and further. Only a few men could be saved in the whole world. They were a pure chosen people, destined to found a new race and a new life, to renew and purify the earth, but no one had seen these men, no one had heard their words and their voices. Manju was worried that this senseless dream haunted his memory so miserably, the impression of this feverish delirium persisted so long. The second week after Easter had come. There were warm bright spring days; in the prison ward the grating windows under which the sentinel paced were opened. Meenal had only been able to visit him twice during his illness; each time she had to obtain permission, and it was difficult. But she often used to come to the hospital yard, especially in the evening, sometimes only to stand a minute and look up at the windows of the ward. One evening, when he was almost well again, Manju fell asleep. On waking up he chanced to go to the window, and at once saw Meenal in the distance at the hospital gate. She seemed to be waiting for someone. Something stabbed him to the heart at that minute. He shuddered and moved away from the window. Next day Meenal did not come, nor the day after; he noticed that he was expecting her uneasily. At last he was discharged. On reaching the prison he learnt from the convicts that Hina Akshara was lying ill at home and was unable to go out. He was very uneasy and sent to inquire after her; he soon learnt that her illness was not dangerous. Hearing that he was anxious about her, Meenal sent him a pencilled note, telling him that she was much better, that she had a slight cold and that she would soon, very soon come and see him at his work. His heart throbbed painfully as he read it. Again it was a warm bright day. Early in the morning, at six o’clock, he went off to work on the river bank, where they used to pound alabaster and where there was a kiln for baking it in a shed. There were only three of them sent. One of the convicts went with the guard to the fortress to fetch a tool; the other began getting the wood ready and laying it in the kiln. Manju came out of the shed on to the river bank, sat down on a heap of logs by the shed and began gazing at the wide deserted river. From the high bank a broad landscape opened before him, the sound of singing floated faintly audible from the other bank. In the vast steppe, bathed in sunshine, he could just see, like black specks, the nomads’ tents. There there was freedom, there other men were living, utterly unlike those here; there time itself seemed to stand still, as though the age of Tanisha and his flocks had not passed. Manju sat gazing, his thoughts passed into day-dreams, into contemplation; he thought of nothing, but a vague restlessness excited and troubled him. Suddenly he found Meenal beside him; she had come up noiselessly and sat down at his side. It was still quite early; the morning chill was still keen. She wore her poor old burnous and the green shawl; her face still showed signs of illness, it was thinner and paler. She gave him a joyful smile of welcome, but held out her hand with her usual timidity. She was always timid of holding out her hand to him and sometimes did not offer it at all, as though afraid he would repel it. He always took her hand as though with repugnance, always seemed vexed to meet her and was sometimes obstinately silent throughout her visit. Sometimes she trembled before him and went away deeply grieved. But now their hands did not part. He stole a rapid glance at her and dropped his eyes on the ground without speaking. They were alone, no one had seen them. The guard had turned away for the time. How it happened he did not know. But all at once something seemed to seize him and fling him at her feet. He wept and threw his arms round her knees. For the first instant she was terribly frightened and she turned pale. She jumped up and looked at him trembling. But at the same moment she understood, and a light of infinite happiness came into her eyes. She knew and had no doubt that he loved her beyond everything and that at last the moment had come.... They wanted to speak, but could not; tears stood in their eyes. They were both pale and thin; but those sick pale faces were bright with the dawn of a new future, of a full resurrection into a new life. They were renewed by love; the heart of each held infinite sources of life for the heart of the other. They resolved to wait and be patient. They had another seven years to wait, and what terrible suffering and what infinite happiness before them! But he had risen again and he knew it and felt it in all his being, while she--she only lived in his life. On the evening of the same day, when the barracks were locked, Manju lay on his plank bed and thought of her. He had even fancied that day that all the convicts who had been his enemies looked at him differently; he had even entered into talk with them and they answered him in a friendly way. He remembered that now, and thought it was bound to be so. Wasn’t everything now bound to be changed? He thought of her. He remembered how continually he had tormented her and wounded her heart. He remembered her pale and thin little face. But these recollections scarcely troubled him now; he knew with what infinite love he would now repay all her sufferings. And what were all, _all_ the agonies of the past! Everything, even his crime, his sentence and imprisonment, seemed to him now in the first rush of feeling an external, strange fact with which he had no concern. But he could not think for long together of anything that evening, and he could not have analysed anything consciously; he was simply feeling. Life had stepped into the place of theory and something quite different would work itself out in his mind. Under his pillow lay the New Testament. He took it up mechanically. The book belonged to Meenal; it was the one from which she had read the raising of Varun to him. At first he was afraid that she would worry him about religion, would talk about the gospel and pester him with books. But to his great surprise she had not once approached the subject and had not even offered him the Testament. He had asked her for it himself not long before his illness and she brought him the book without a word. Till now he had not opened it. He did not open it now, but one thought passed through his mind: “Can her convictions not be mine now? Her feelings, her aspirations at least....” She too had been greatly agitated that day, and at night she was taken ill again. But she was so happy--and so unexpectedly happy--that she was almost frightened of her happiness. Seven years, _only_ seven years! At the beginning of their happiness at some moments they were both ready to look on those seven years as though they were seven days. He did not know that the new life would not be given him for nothing, that he would have to pay dearly for it, that it would cost him great striving, great suffering. But that is the beginning of a new story--the story of the gradual renewal of a man, the story of his gradual regeneration, of his passing from one world into another, of his initiation into a new unknown life. That might be the subject of a new story, but our present story is ended.
{'entity_replacement_style': 'REPLACE_BOLLYWOOD', 'name_id_map': {'fyodor': 'Anjali', 'dostoevsky': 'Monali', 'constance': 'Asin', 'garnett': 'Sakshi', 'nekrassov': 'Chiranjeevi', 'proudhon': 'Karun', 'byelinsky': 'Shraddha', 'gogol': 'Anushka', 'nicholas': 'Meena', 'maurice': 'Komal', 'baring': 'Ishaan', 'mihail': 'Siddharth', 'plestcheiev': 'Zoya', 'dourov': 'Shruti', 'grigoryev': 'Amrita', 'pushkin': 'Surbhi', 'german': 'Nikita', 'raskolnikov': 'Manju', 'lizaveta': 'Kriti', 'alyona': 'Tanvi', 'ivanovna': 'Lara', 'marmeladov': 'Sushmita', 'lebeziatnikov': 'Rohan', 'katerina': 'Vinita', 'sonia': 'Meenal', 'lewes': 'Soumya', 'ivan': 'Nithya', 'klopstock': 'Saira', 'darya': 'Parineeti', 'frantsovna': 'Akanksha', 'sofya': 'Hina', 'semyonovna': 'Akshara', 'amalia': 'Lavanya', 'fyodorovna': 'Shilpa', 'kapernaumov': 'Fawad', 'afanasyvitch': 'Tabu', 'semyon': 'Richa', 'zaharovitch': 'Ramya', 'kozel': 'Salman', 'lippevechsel': 'Raghav', 'nastasya': 'Shakuntala', 'praskovya': 'Leena', 'pavlovna': 'Shailesh', 'dounia': 'Ronit', 'vassily': 'Niharika', 'vahrushin': 'Taapsee', 'svidrigailov': 'Tarun', 'marfa': 'Parvathy', 'petrovna': 'Rahul', 'bacchus': 'Kritika', 'petrovitch': 'Sidharth', 'rodya': 'Aadil', 'pyotr': 'Riddhi', 'afanasy': 'Sahil', 'ivanovitch': 'Reema', 'pulcheria': 'Sonakshi', 'luzhin': 'Gully', 'avdotya': 'Saket', 'romanovna': 'Chandan', 'god': 'Nidhi', 'rodion': 'Ruchi', 'romanovitch': 'Katrina', 'svidrigailovs': 'Lakshya', 'zeus': 'Sonam', 'missy': 'Neerja', 'razumihin': 'Rakul', 'turgenev': 'Neeraj', 'mikolka': 'Mithun', 'matvey': 'Dharmendra', 'pokorev': 'Sania', 'harkov': 'Rani', 'koch': 'Prerna', 'aie': 'Rajat', 'mitka': 'Sunny', 'luise': 'Rajesh', 'alexandr': 'Nushrat', 'grigorievitch': 'Gauri', 'zarnitsyn': 'Vicky', 'tchebarov': 'Shreya', 'ilya': 'Tanmay', 'karl': 'Abhishek', 'henriette': 'Dhruv', 'pfoo': 'Rajeev', 'nikodim': 'Ashok', 'fomitch': 'Disha', 'pestryakov': 'Mansi', 'heruvimov': 'Ramesh', 'jove': 'Yami', 'rousseau': 'Ekta', 'radishchev': 'Vikas', 'christ': 'Pankaj', 'vrazumihin': 'Shafaq', 'shelopaev': 'Om', 'zossimov': 'Radhika', 'alexey': 'Suman', 'semyonovitch': 'Prithvi', 'pashenka': 'Ravi', 'harlamov': 'Tejasswi', 'buch': 'Ranbir', 'kobelev': 'Krish', 'zametov': 'Zeeshan.', 'nikiforovna': 'Mahesh', 'natalya': 'Neelam', 'yegorovna': 'Manas', 'krestovsky': 'Harsh', 'tolstyakov': 'Kiara', 'iv': 'Swara', 'porfiry': 'Guneet', 'dushkin': 'Pramod', 'nikolay': 'Janhvi', 'dementyev': 'Aditya', 'dmitri': 'Charu', 'peski': 'Yash', 'kryukov': 'Keshav', 'bakaleyev': 'Kavita', 'yushin': 'Asha', 'andrey': 'Priyanka', 'duclida': 'Gopika', 'potchinkov': 'Pavan', 'babushkin': 'Aditi', 'afrosinya': 'Sameera', 'tit': 'Vidya', 'vassilitch': 'Amol', 'alyoshka': 'Ayush', 'shil': 'Sanjeev', 'polenka': 'Varsha', 'papa': 'Sharman', 'mihailovitch': 'Sagar', 'bezzemelny': 'Karthik', 'schegolskoy': 'Anaya', 'polya': 'Sneha', 'lida': 'Shalu', 'ludwigovna': 'Madhuri', 'mamma': 'Vipin', 'kolya': 'Mayank', 'alexandrovna': 'Vikrant', 'rubinstein': 'Shahid', 'prokofitch': 'Ranjit', 'vasya': 'Tia', 'fancy': 'Chaitanya', 'potanchikov': 'Alok', 'romeo': 'Arvind', 'kepler': 'Shubham', 'newton': 'Akshay', 'lycurgus': 'Priyadarshan', 'solon': 'Abhay', 'mahomet': 'Pushkar', 'napoleon': 'Parth', 'lazarus': 'Varun', 'napoleons': 'Madhavan', 'deuce': 'Ranveer', 'arkady': 'Amitabh', 'malaya': 'Pooja', 'vishera': 'Navya', 'aniska': 'Pritam', 'filka': 'Yashwant', 'svirbey': 'Aparna', 'raphael': 'Anil', 'prilukov': 'Kiran', 'viazemsky': 'Chitrangada', 'berg': 'Muskaan', 'resslich': 'Vishal', 'philip': 'Aishwarya', 'razsudkin': 'Ritesh', 'kapernaumovs': 'Naman', 'martha': 'Saif', 'mary': 'Gaurav', 'jesus': 'Pranav', 'believest': 'Udita', 'alma': 'Shabana', 'mack': 'Bandita', 'fourier': 'Kalyani', 'terebyeva': 'Arjun', 'varents': 'Bhumi', 'tfoo': 'Sarika', 'pani': 'Anirudh', 'mangot': 'Ronak', 'vater': 'Rajkummar', 'johann': 'Maanvi', 'kobilatnikov': 'Bhavesh', 'piderit': 'Prateek', 'wagner': 'Ruchika', 'providence': 'Akshaye', 'mont': 'Kavya', 'blanc': 'Manisha', 'linen': 'Mohit', 'semyonova': 'Medha', 'marlborough': 'Kuldeep', 'that': 'Sameer', 'diamanten': 'Mukesh', 'perlen': 'Tanushree', 'morgenfruh': 'Mohanlal', 'petersburg': 'Aamir', 'katia': 'Sohail', 'schiller': 'Tushar', 'parasha': 'Mitali', 'madonna': 'Shriman', 'fedosya': 'Hrithik', 'neva': 'Saajan', 'petrovsky': 'Karan', 'achilles': 'Kajol', 'siberia': 'Urmila', 'campany': 'Pallavi', 'rororodionovitch': 'Vinay', 'nil': 'Nandita', 'pavlitch': 'Genelia', 'hulloa': 'Neetu', 'abraham': 'Tanisha'}}