Mother
Chapter XVIII
Several days later Vyesovshchikov came in, as shabby, untidy, and disgruntled as ever.
"Haven’t you heard who killed Isay?" He stopped in his clumsy pacing of the room to turn to Pavel.
"No!" Pavel answered briefly.
"There you got a man who wasn’t squeamish about the job! And I’d always been preparing to do it myself. It was my job—just the thing for me!"
"Don’t talk nonsense, Nikolay," Pavel said in a friendly manner.
"Now, really, what’s the matter with you?" interposed the mother kindly. "You have a soft heart, and yet you keep barking like a vicious dog. What do you go on that way for?"
At this moment she was actually pleased to see Nikolay. Even his pockmarked face looked more agreeable to her. She pitied him as never before.
"Well, I’m not fit for anything but jobs like that!" said Nikolay dully, shrugging his shoulders. "I keep thinking, and thinking where my place in the world is. There is no place for me! The people require to be spoken to, and I cannot. I see everything; I feel all the people’s wrongs; but I cannot express myself: I have a dumb soul." He went over to Pavel with drooping head; and scraping his fingers on the table, he said plaintively, and so unlike himself, childishly, sadly: "Give me some hard work to do, comrade. I can’t live this life any longer. It’s so senseless, so useless. You are all working in the movement, and I see that it is growing, and I’m outside of it all. I haul boards and beams. Is it possible to live for the sake of hauling timber? Give me some hard work."
Pavel clasped his hand, pulling him toward himself.
"We will!"
From behind the curtains resounded the Little Russian’s voice:
"Nikolay, I’ll teach you typesetting, and you’ll work as a compositor for us. Yes?"
Nikolay went over to him and said:
"If you’ll teach me that, I’ll give you my knife."
"To the devil with your knife!" exclaimed the Little Russian and burst out laughing.
"It’s a good knife," Nikolay insisted. Pavel laughed, too.
Vyesovshchikov stopped in the middle of the room and asked:
"Are you laughing at me?"
"Of course," replied the Little Russian, jumping out of bed. "I’ll tell you what! Let’s take a walk in the fields! The night is fine; there’s bright moonshine. Let’s go!"
"All right," said Pavel.
"And I’ll go with you, too!" declared Nikolay. "I like to hear you laugh, Little Russian."
"And I like to hear you promise presents," answered the Little Russian, smiling.
While Andrey was dressing in the kitchen, the mother scolded him:
"Dress warmer! You’ll get sick." And when they all had left, she watched them through the window; then looked at the ikon, and said softly: "God help them!"
She turned off the lamp and began to pray alone in the moonlit room.
* * * * *
The days flew by in such rapid succession that the mother could not give much thought to the first of May. Only at night, when, exhausted by the noise and the exciting bustle of the day, she went to bed, tired and worn out, her heart would begin to ache.
"Oh, dear, if it would only be over soon!"
At dawn, when the factory whistle blew, the son and the Little Russian, after hastily drinking tea and snatching a bite, would go, leaving a dozen or so small commissions for the mother. The whole day long she would move around like a squirrel in a wheel, cook dinner, and boil lilac-colored gelatin and glue for the proclamations. Some people would come, leave notes with her to deliver to Pavel, and disappear, infecting her with their excitement.
The leaflets appealing to the working people to celebrate the first of May flooded the village and the factory. Every night they were posted on the fences, even on the doors of the police station; and every day they were found in the factory. In the mornings the police would go around, swearing, tearing down and scraping off the lilac-covered bills from the fences. At noon, however, these bills would fly over the streets again, rolling to the feet of the passers-by. Spies were sent from the city to stand at the street corners and carefully scan the working people on their gay passages from and to the factory at dinner time. Everybody was pleased to see the impotence of the police, and even the elder workingmen would smile at one another:
"Things are happening, aren’t they?"
All over, people would cluster into groups hotly discussing the stirring appeals. Life was at boiling point. This spring it held more of interest to everybody, it brought forth something new to all; for some it was a good excuse to excite themselves—they could pour out their malicious oaths on the agitators; to others, it brought perplexed anxiety as well as hope; to others again, the minority, an acute delight in the consciousness of being the power that set the village astir.
Pavel and Andrey scarcely ever went to bed. They came home just before the morning whistle sounded, tired, hoarse, and pale. The mother knew that they held meetings in the woods and the marsh; that squads of mounted police galloped around the village, that spies were crawling all over, holding up and searching single workingmen, dispersing groups, and sometimes making an arrest. She understood that her son and Andrey might be arrested any night. Sometimes she thought that this would be the best thing for them.
Strangely enough, the investigation of the murder of Isay, the record clerk, suddenly ceased. For two days the local police questioned the people in regard to the matter, examining about ten men or so, and finally lost interest in the affair.
Marya Korsunova, in a chat with the mother, reflected the opinion of the police, with whom she associated as amicably as with everybody:
"How is it possible to find the guilty man? That morning some hundred people met Isay, and ninety of them, if not more, might have given him the blow. During these eight years he has galled everybody."
The Little Russian changed considerably. His face became hollow-cheeked; his eyelids got heavy and drooped over his round eyes, half covering them. His smiles were wrung from him unwillingly, and two thin wrinkles were drawn from his nostrils to the corners of his lips. He talked less about everyday matters; on the other hand, he was more frequently enkindled with a passionate fire; and he intoxicated his listeners with his ecstatic words about the future, about the bright, beautiful holiday, when they would celebrate the triumph of freedom and reason. Listening to his words, the mother felt that he had gone further than anybody else toward the great, glorious day, and that he saw the joys of that future more vividly than the rest. When the investigations of Isay’s murder ceased, he said in disgust and smiling sadly:
"It’s not only the people they treat like trash, but even the very men whom they set on the people like dogs. They have no concern for their faithful Judases, they care only for their shekels—only for them." And after a sullen silence, he added: "And I pity that man the more I think of him. I didn’t intend to kill him—didn’t want to!"
"Enough, Andrey," said Pavel severely.
"You happened to knock against something rotten, and it fell to pieces," added the mother in a low voice.
"You’re right—but that’s no consolation."
He often spoke in this way. In his mouth the words assumed a peculiar, universal significance, bitter and corrosive.
At last, it was the first of May! The whistle shrilled as usual, powerful and peremptory. The mother, who hadn’t slept a minute during the night, jumped out of bed, made a fire in the samovar, which had been prepared the evening before, and was about, as always, to knock at the door of her son’s and Andrey’s room, when, with a wave of her hand she recollected the day, and went to seat herself at the window, leaning her cheek on her hand.
Clusters of light clouds, white and rosy, sailed swiftly across the pale blue sky, like huge birds frightened by the piercing shriek of the escaping steam. The mother watched the clouds, absorbed in herself. Her head was heavy, her eyes dry and inflamed from the sleepless night. A strange calm possessed her breast, her heart was beating evenly, and her mind dwelt on only common, everyday things.
"I prepared the samovar too early; it will boil away. Let them sleep longer to-day; they’ve worn themselves out, both of them."
A cheerful ray of sun looked into the room. She held her hand out to it, and with the other gently patted the bright young beam, smiling kindly and thoughtfully. Then she rose, removed the pipe from the samovar, trying not to make a noise, washed herself, and began to pray, crossing herself piously, and noiselessly moving her lips. Her face was radiant, and her right eyebrow kept rising gradually and suddenly dropping.
The second whistle blew more softly with less assurance, a tremor in its thick and mellow sound. It seemed to the mother that the whistle lasted longer to-day than ever. The clear, musical voice of the Little Russian sounded in the room:
"Pavel, do you hear? They’re calling."
The mother heard the patter of bare feet on the floor and some one yawn with gusto.
"The samovar is ready," she cried.
"We’re getting up," Pavel answered merrily.
"The sun is rising," said the Little Russian. "The clouds are racing; they’re out of place to-day." He went into the kitchen all disheveled but jolly after his sleep. "Good morning, mother dear; how did you sleep?"
The mother went to him and whispered:
"Andriusha, keep close to him."
"Certainly. As long as it depends on us, we’ll always stick to each other, you may be sure."
"What’s that whispering about?" Pavel asked.
"Nothing. She told me to wash myself better, so the girls will look at me," replied the Little Russian, going out on the porch to wash himself.
"'Rise up, awake, you workingmen,'" Pavel sang softly.
As the day grew, the clouds dispersed, chased by the wind. The mother got the dishes ready for the tea, shaking her head over the thought of how strange it was for both of them to be joking and smiling all the time on this morning, when who knew what would befall them in the afternoon. Yet, curiously enough, she felt herself calm, almost happy.
They sat a long time over the tea to while away the hours of expectation. Pavel, as was his wont, slowly and scrupulously mixed the sugar in the glass with his spoon, and accurately salted his favorite crust from the end of the loaf. The Little Russian moved his feet under the table—he never could at once settle his feet comfortably—and looked at the rays of sunlight playing on the wall and ceiling.
"When I was a youngster of ten years," he recounted, "I wanted to catch the sun in a glass. So I took the glass, stole to the wall, and bang! I cut my hand and got a licking to boot. After the licking I went out in the yard and saw the sun in a puddle. So I started to trample the mud with my feet. I covered myself with mud, and got another drubbing. What was I to do? I screamed to the sun: 'It doesn’t hurt me, you red devil; it doesn’t hurt me!' and stuck out my tongue at him. And I felt comforted."
"Why did the sun seem red to you?" Pavel asked, laughing.
"There was a blacksmith opposite our house, with fine red cheeks, and a huge red beard. I thought the sun resembled him."
The mother lost patience and said:
"You’d better talk about your arrangements for the procession."
"Everything’s been arranged," said Pavel.
"No use talking of things once decided upon. It only confuses the mind," the Little Russian added. "If we are all arrested, Nikolay Ivanovich will come and tell you what to do. He will help you in every way."
"All right," said the mother with a heavy sigh.
"Let’s go out," said Pavel dreamily.
"No, rather stay indoors," replied Andrey. "No need to annoy the eyes of the police so often. They know you well enough."
Fedya Mazin came running in, all aglow, with red spots on his cheeks, quivering with youthful joy. His animation dispelled the tedium of expectation for them.
"It’s begun!" he reported. "The people are all out on the street, their faces sharp as the edge of an ax. Vyesovshchikov, the Gusevs, and Samoylov have been standing at the factory gates all the time, and have been making speeches. Most of the people went back from the factory, and returned home. Let’s go! It’s just time! It’s ten o’clock already."
"I’m going!" said Pavel decidedly.
"You’ll see," Fedya assured them, "the whole factory will rise up after dinner."
And he hurried away, followed by the quiet words of the mother:
"Burning like a wax candle in the wind."
She rose and went into the kitchen to dress.
"Where are you going, mother?"
"With you," she said.
Andrey looked at Pavel pulling his mustache. Pavel arranged his hair with a quick gesture, and went to his mother.
"Mother, I will not tell you anything; and don’t you tell me anything, either. Right, mother?"
"All right, all right! God bless you!" she murmured.
When she went out and heard the holiday hum of the people’s voices—an anxious and expectant hum—when she saw everywhere, at the gates and windows, crowds of people staring at Andrey and her son, a blur quivered before her eyes, changes from a transparent green to a muddy gray.
People greeted them—there was something peculiar in their greetings. She caught whispered, broken remarks:
"Here they are, the leaders!"
"We don’t know who the leaders are!"
"Why, I didn’t say anything wrong."
At another place some one in a yard shouted excitedly:
"The police will get them, and that’ll be the end of them!"
"What if they do?" retorted another voice.
Farther on a crying woman’s voice leaped frightened from the window to the street:
"Consider! Are you a single man, are you? They are bachelors and don’t care!"
When they passed the house of Zosimov, the man without legs, who received a monthly allowance from the factory because of his mutilation, he stuck his head through the window and cried out:
"Pavel, you scoundrel, they’ll wring your head off for your doings, you’ll see!"
The mother trembled and stopped. The exclamation aroused in her a sharp sensation of anger. She looked up at the thick, bloated face of the cripple, and he hid himself, cursing. Then she quickened her pace, overtook her son, and tried not to fall behind again. He and Andrey seemed not to notice anything, not to hear the outcries that pursued them. They moved calmly, without haste, and talked loudly about commonplaces. They were stopped by Mironov, a modest, elderly man, respected by everybody for his clean, sober life.
"Not working either, Daniïl Ivanovich?" Pavel asked.
"My wife is going to be confined. Well, and such an exciting day, too," Mironov responded, staring fixedly at the comrades. He said to them in an undertone:
"Boys, I hear you’re going to make an awful row—smash the superintendent’s windows."
"Why, are we drunk?" exclaimed Pavel.
"We are simply going to march along the streets with flags, and sing songs," said the Little Russian. "You’ll have a chance to hear our songs. They’re our confession of faith."
"I know your confession of faith," said Mironov thoughtfully. "I read your papers. You, Nilovna," he exclaimed, smiling at the mother with knowing eyes, "are you going to revolt, too?"
"Well, even if it’s only before death, I want to walk shoulder to shoulder with the truth."
"I declare!" said Mironov. "I guess they were telling the truth when they said you carried forbidden books to the factory."
"Who said so?" asked Pavel.
"Oh, people. Well, good-by! Behave yourselves!"
The mother laughed softly; she was pleased to hear that such things were said of her. Pavel smilingly turned to her:
"Oh, you’ll get into prison, mother!"
"I don’t mind," she murmured.
The sun rose higher, pouring warmth into the bracing freshness of the spring day. The clouds floated more slowly, their shadows grew thinner and more transparent, and crawled gently over the streets and roofs. The bright sunlight seemed to clean the village, to wipe the dust and dirt from the walls and the tedium from the faces. Everything assumed a more cheerful aspect; the voices sounded louder, drowning the far-off rumble and heavings of the factory machines.
Again, from all sides, from the windows and the yards, different words and voices, now uneasy and malicious, now thoughtful and gay, found their way to the mother’s ears. But this time she felt a desire to retort, to thank, to explain, to participate in the strangely variegated life of the day.
Off a corner of the main thoroughfare, in a narrow by-street, a crowd of about a hundred people had gathered, and from its depths resounded Vyesovshchikov’s voice:
"They squeeze our blood like juice from huckleberries." His words fell like hammer blows on the people.
"That’s true!" the resonant cry rang out simultaneously from a number of throats.
"The boy is doing his best," said the Little Russian. "I’ll go help him." He bent low and before Pavel had time to stop him he twisted his tall, flexible body into the crowd like a corkscrew into a cork, and soon his singing voice rang out:
"Comrades! They say there are various races on the earth—Jews and Germans, English and Tartars. But I don’t believe it. There are only two nations, two irreconcilable tribes—the rich and the poor. People dress differently and speak differently; but look at the rich Frenchman, the rich German, or the rich Englishman, you’ll see that they are all Tartars in the way they treat their workingman—a plague on them!"
A laugh broke out in the crowd.
"On the other hand, we can see the French workingmen, the Tartar workingmen, the Turkish workingmen, all lead the same dog’s life, as we—we, the Russian workingmen."
More and more people joined the crowd; one after the other they thronged into the by-street, silent, stepping on tiptoe, and craning their necks. Andrey raised his voice:
"The workingmen of foreign countries have already learned this simple truth, and to-day, on this bright first of May, the foreign working people fraternize with one another. They quit their work, and go out into the streets to look at themselves, to take stock of their immense power. On this day, the workingmen out there throb with one heart; for all hearts are lighted with the consciousness of the might of the working people; all hearts beat with comradeship, each and every one of them is ready to lay down his life in the war for the happiness of all, for freedom and truth to all—comrades!"
"The police!" some one shouted.
Chapter XIX
From the main street four mounted policemen flourishing their knouts came riding into the by-street directly at the crowd.
"Disperse!"
"What sort of talking is going on?"
"Who’s speaking?"
The people scowled, giving way to the horses unwillingly. Some climbed up on fences; raillery was heard here and there.
"They put pigs on horses; they grunt: 'Here we are, leaders, too!'" resounded a sonorous, provoking voice.
The Little Russian was left alone in the middle of the street; two horses shaking their manes pressed at him. He stepped aside, and at the same time the mother grasped his hand, pulling him away grumbling:
"You promised to stick to Pasha; and here you are running up against the edge of a knife all by yourself."
"I plead guilty," said the Little Russian, smiling at Pavel. "Ugh! What a force of police there is in the world!"
"All right," murmured the mother.
An alarming, crushing exhaustion came over her. It rose from within her and made her dizzy. There was a strange alternation of sadness and joy in her heart. She wished the afternoon whistle would sound.
They reached the square where the church stood. Around the church within the paling a thick crowd was sitting and standing. There were some five hundred gay youth and bustling women with children darting around the groups like butterflies. The crowd swung from side to side. The people raised their heads and looked into the distance in different directions, waiting impatiently.
"Mitenka!" softly vibrated a woman’s voice. "Have pity on yourself!"
"Stop!" rang out the response.
And the grave Sizov spoke calmly, persuasively:
"No, we mustn’t abandon our children. They have grown wiser than ourselves; they live more boldly. Who saved our cent for the marshes? They did. We must remember that. For doing it they were dragged to prison; but we derived the benefit. The benefit was for all."
The whistle blew, drowning the talk of the crowd. The people started. Those sitting rose to their feet. For a moment the silence of death prevailed; all became watchful, and many faces grew pale.
"Comrades!" resounded Pavel’s voice, ringing and firm.
A dry, hot haze burned the mother’s eyes, and with a single movement of her body, suddenly strengthened, she stood behind her son. All turned toward Pavel, and drew up to him, like iron filings attracted by a magnet.
"Brothers! The hour has come to give up this life of ours, this life of greed, hatred, and darkness, this life of violence and falsehood, this life where there is no place for us, where we are no human beings."
He stopped, and everybody maintained silence, moving still closer to him. The mother stared at her son. She saw only his eyes, his proud, brave, burning eyes.
"Comrades! We have decided to declare openly who we are; we raise our banner to-day, the banner of reason, of truth, of liberty! And now I raise it!"
A flag pole, white and slender, flashed in the air, bent down, cleaving the crowd. For a moment it was lost from sight; then over the uplifted faces the broad canvas of the working people’s flag spread its wings like a red bird.
Pavel raised his hand—the pole swung, and a dozen hands caught the smooth white rod. Among them was the mother’s hand.
"Long live the working people!" he shouted.
Hundreds of voices responded to his sonorous call.
"Long live the Social Democratic Workingmen’s Party, our party, comrades, our spiritual mother."
The crowd seethed and hummed. Those who understood the meaning of the flag squeezed their way up to it. Mazin, Samoylov, and the Gusevs stood close at Pavel’s side. Nikolay with bent head pushed his way through the crowd. Some other people unknown to the mother, young and with burning eyes, jostled her.
"Long live the working people of all countries!" shouted Pavel.
And ever increasing in force and joy, a thousand-mouthed echo responded in a soul-stirring acclaim.
The mother clasped Pavel’s hand, and somebody else’s, too. She was breathless with tears, yet refrained from shedding them. Her legs trembled, and with quivering lips she cried:
"Oh, my dear boys, that’s true. There you are now—"
A broad smile spread over Nikolay’s pockmarked face; he stared at the flag and, stretching his hand toward it, roared out something; then caught the mother around the neck with the same hand, kissed her, and laughed.
"Comrades!" sang out the Little Russian, subduing the noise of the crowd with his mellow voice. "Comrades! We have now started a holy procession in the name of the new God, the God of Truth and Light, the God of Reason and Goodness. We march in this holy procession, comrades, over a long and hard road. Our goal is far, far away, and the crown of thorns is near! Those who don’t believe in the might of truth, who have not the courage to stand up for it even unto death, who do not believe in themselves and are afraid of suffering—such of you, step aside! We call upon those only who believe in our triumph. Those who cannot see our goal, let them not walk with us; only misery is in store for them! Fall into line, comrades! Long live the first of May, the holiday of freemen!"
The crowd drew closer. Pavel waved the flag. It spread out in the air and sailed forward, sunlit, smiling, red, and glowing.
"Let us renounce the old world!" resounded Fedya Mazin’s ringing voice; and scores of voices took up the cry. It floated as on a mighty wave.
"Let us shake its dust from our feet."
The mother marched behind Mazin with a smile on her dry lips, and looked over his head at her son and the flag. Everywhere, around her, was the sparkle of fresh young cheerful faces, the glimmer of many-colored eyes; and at the head of all—her son and Andrey. She heard their voices, Andrey’s, soft and humid, mingled in friendly accord with the heavy bass of her son:
"Rise up, awake, you workingmen! On, on, to war, you hungry hosts!"
Men ran toward the red flag, raising a clamor; then joining the others, they marched along, their shouts lost in the broad sounds of the song of the revolution.
The mother had heard that song before. It had often been sung in a subdued tone; and the Little Russian had often whistled it. But now she seemed for the first time to hear this appeal to unite in the struggle.
"We march to join our suffering mates."
The song flowed on, embracing the people.
Some one’s face, alarmed yet joyous, moved along beside the mother’s, and a trembling voice spoke, sobbing:
"Mitya! Where are you going?"
The mother interfered without stopping:
"Let him go! Don’t be alarmed! Don’t fear! I myself was afraid at first, too. Mine is right at the head—he who bears the standard—that’s my son!"
"Murderers! Where are you going? There are soldiers over there!" And suddenly clasping the mother’s hand in her bony hands, the tall, thin woman exclaimed: "My dear! How they sing! Oh, the sectarians! And Mitya is singing!"
"Don’t be troubled!" murmured the mother. "It’s a sacred thing. Think of it! Christ would not have been, either, if men hadn’t perished for his sake."
This thought had flashed across the mother’s mind all of a sudden and struck her by its simple, clear truth. She stared at the woman, who held her hand firmly in her clasp, and repeated, smiling:
"Christ would not have been, either, if men hadn’t suffered for his sake."
Sizov appeared at her side. He took off his hat and waving it to the measure of the song, said:
"They’re marching openly, eh, mother? And composed a song, too! What a song, mother, eh?"
"The Czar for the army soldiers must have, Then give him your sons—"
"They’re not afraid of anything," said Sizov. "And my son is in the grave. The factory crushed him to death, yes!"
The mother’s heart beat rapidly, and she began to lag behind. She was soon pushed aside hard against a fence, and the close-packed crowd went streaming past her. She saw that there were many people, and she was pleased.
"Rise up, awake, you workingmen!"
It seemed as if the blare of a mighty brass trumpet were rousing men and stirring in some hearts the willingness to fight, in other hearts a vague joy, a premonition of something new, and a burning curiosity; in still others a confused tremor of hope and curiosity. The song was an outlet, too, for the stinging bitterness accumulated during years.
The people looked ahead, where the red banner was swinging and streaming in the air. All were saying something and shouting; but the individual voice was lost in the song—the new song, in which the old note of mournful meditation was absent. It was not the utterance of a soul wandering in solitude along the dark paths of melancholy perplexity, of a soul beaten down by want, burdened with fear, deprived of individuality, and colorless. It breathed no sighs of a strength hungering for space; it shouted no provoking cries of irritated courage ready to crush both the good and the bad indiscriminately. It did not voice the elemental instinct of the animal to snatch freedom for freedom’s sake, nor the feeling of wrong or vengeance capable of destroying everything and powerless to build up anything. In this song there was nothing from the old, slavish world. It floated along directly, evenly; it proclaimed an iron virility, a calm threat. Simple, clear, it swept the people after it along an endless path leading to the far distant future; and it spoke frankly about the hardships of the way. In its steady fire a heavy clod seemed to burn and melt—the sufferings they had endured, the dark load of their habitual feelings, their cursed dread of what was coming.
"They all join in!" somebody roared exultantly. "Well done, boys!"
Apparently the man felt something vast, to which he could not give expression in ordinary words, so he uttered a stiff oath. Yet the malice, the blind dark malice of a slave also streamed hotly through his teeth. Disturbed by the light shed upon it, it hissed like a snake, writhing in venomous words.
"Heretics!" a man with a broken voice shouted from a window, shaking his fist threateningly.
A piercing scream importunately bored into the mother’s ears—"Rioting against the emperor, against his Majesty the Czar? No, no?"
Agitated people flashed quickly past her, a dark lava stream of men and women, carried along by this song, which cleared every obstacle out of its path.
Growing in the mother’s breast was the mighty desire to shout to the crowd:
"Oh, my dear people!"
There, far away from her, was the red banner—she saw her son without seeing him—his bronzed forehead, his eyes burning with the bright fire of faith. Now she was in the tail of the crowd among the people who walked without hurrying, indifferent, looking ahead with the cold curiosity of spectators who know beforehand how the show will end. They spoke softly with confidence.
"One company of infantry is near the school, and the other near the factory."
"The governor has come."
"Is that so?"
"I saw him myself. He’s here."
Some one swore jovially and said:
"They’ve begun to fear our fellows, after all, haven’t they? The soldiers have come and the governor—"
"Dear boys!" throbbed in the breast of the mother. But the words around her sounded dead and cold. She hastened her steps to get away from these people, and it was not difficult for her to outstrip their lurching gait.
Suddenly the head of the crowd, as it were, bumped against something; its body swung backward with an alarming, low hum. The song trembled, then flowed on more rapidly and louder; but again the dense wave of sounds hesitated in its forward course. Voices fell out of the chorus one after the other. Here and there a voice was raised in the effort to bring the song to its previous height, to push it forward:
"Rise up, awake, you workingmen! On, on, to war, you hungry hosts!"
Though she saw nothing and was ignorant of what was happening there in front, the mother divined, and elbowed her way rapidly through the crowd.
Chapter XX
"Comrades!" the voice of Pavel was heard. "Soldiers are people the same as ourselves. They will not strike us! Why should they beat us? Because we bear the truth necessary for all? This our truth is necessary to them, too. Just now they do not understand this; but the time is nearing when they will rise with us, when they will march, not under the banner of robbers and murderers, the banner which the liars and beasts order them to call the banner of glory and honor, but under our banner of freedom and goodness! We ought to go forward so that they should understand our truth the sooner. Forward, comrades! Ever forward!"
Pavel’s voice sounded firm, the words rang in the air distinctly. But the crowd fell asunder; one after the other the people dropped off to the right or to the left, going toward their homes, or leaning against the fences. Now the crowd had the shape of a wedge, and its point was Pavel, over whose head the banner of the laboring people was burning red.
At the end of the street, closing the exit to the square, the mother saw a low, gray wall of men, one just like the other, without faces. On the shoulder of each a bayonet was smiling its thin, chill smile; and from this entire immobile wall a cold gust blew down on the workmen, striking the breast of the mother and penetrating her heart.
She forced her way into the crowd among people familiar to her, and, as it were, leaned on them.
She pressed closely against a tall, lame man with a clean-shaven face. In order to look at her, he had to turn his head stiffly.
"What do you want? Who are you?" he asked her.
"The mother of Pavel Vlasov," she answered, her knees trembling beneath her, her lower lip involuntarily dropping.
"Ha-ha!" said the lame man. "Very well!"
"Comrades!" Pavel cried. "Onward all your lives. There is no other way for us! Sing!"
The atmosphere grew tense. The flag rose and rocked and waved over the heads of the people, gliding toward the gray wall of soldiers. The mother trembled. She closed her eyes, and cried: "Oh—oh!"
None but Pavel, Andrey, Samoylov, and Mazin advanced beyond the crowd.
The limpid voice of Fedya Mazin slowly quivered in the air.
"'In mortal strife—'" he began the song.
"'You victims fell—'" answered thick, subdued voices. The words dropped in two heavy sighs. People stepped forward, each footfall audible. A new song, determined and resolute, burst out:
"You yielded up your lives for them."
Fedya’s voice wreathed and curled like a bright ribbon.
"A-ha-ha-ha!" some one exclaimed derisively. "They’ve struck up a funeral song, the dirty dogs!"
"Beat him!" came the angry response.
The mother clasped her hands to her breast, looked about, and saw that the crowd, before so dense, was now standing irresolute, watching the comrades walk away from them with the banner, followed by about a dozen people, one of whom, however, at every forward move, jumped aside as if the path in the middle of the street were red hot and burned his soles.
"The tyranny will fall—" sounded the prophetic song from the lips of Fedya.
"And the people will rise!" the chorus of powerful voices seconded confidently and menacingly.
But the harmonious flow of the song was broken by the quiet words:
"He is giving orders."
"Charge bayonets!" came the piercing order from the front.
The bayonets curved in the air, and glittered sharply; then fell and stretched out to confront the banner.
"Ma-arch!"
"They’re coming!" said the lame man, and thrusting his hands into his pockets made a long step to one side.
The mother, without blinking, looked on. The gray line of soldiers tossed to and fro, and spread out over the entire width of the street. It moved on evenly, coolly, carrying in front of itself a fine-toothed comb of sparkling bayonets. Then it came to a stand. The mother took long steps to get nearer to her son. She saw how Andrey strode ahead of Pavel and fenced him off with his long body. "Get alongside of me!" Pavel shouted sharply. Andrey was singing, his hands clasped behind his back, his head uplifted. Pavel pushed him with his shoulder, and again cried:
"At my side! Let the banner be in front!"
"Disperse!" called a little officer in a thin voice, brandishing a white saber. He lifted his feet high, and without bending his knees struck his soles on the ground irritably. The high polish on his boots caught the eyes of the mother.
To one side and somewhat behind him walked a tall, clean-shaven man, with a thick, gray mustache. He wore a long gray overcoat with a red underlining, and yellow stripes on his trousers. His gait was heavy, and like the Little Russian, he clasped his hands behind his back. He regarded Pavel, raising his thick gray eyebrows.
The mother seemed to be looking into infinity. At each breath her breast was ready to burst with a loud cry. It choked her, but for some reason she restrained it. Her hands clutched at her bosom. She staggered from repeated thrusts. She walked onward without thought, almost without consciousness. She felt that behind her the crowd was getting thinner; a cold wind had blown on them and scattered them like autumn leaves.
The men around the red banner moved closer and closer together. The faces of the soldiers were clearly seen across the entire width of the street, monstrously flattened, stretched out in a dirty yellowish band. In it were unevenly set variously colored eyes, and in front the sharp bayonets glittered crudely. Directed against the breasts of the people, although not yet touching them, they drove them apart, pushing one man after the other away from the crowd and breaking it up.
Behind her the mother heard the trampling noise of those who were running away. Suppressed, excited voices cried:
"Disperse, boys!"
"Vlasov, run!"
"Back, Pavel!"
"Drop the banner, Pavel!" Vyesovshchikov said glumly. "Give it to me! I’ll hide it!"
He grabbed the pole with his hand; the flag rocked backward.
"Let go!" thundered Pavel.
Nikolay drew his hand back as if it had been burned. The song died away. Some persons crowded solidly around Pavel; but he cut through to the front. A sudden silence fell.
Around the banner some twenty men were grouped, not more, but they stood firmly. The mother felt drawn to them by awe and by a confused desire to say something to them.
"Take this thing away from him, lieutenant." The even voice of the tall old man was heard. He pointed to the banner. A little officer jumped up to Pavel, snatched at the flag pole, and shouted shrilly:
"Drop it!"
The red flag trembled in the air, moving to the right and to the left, then rose again. The little officer jumped back and sat down. Nikolay darted by the mother, shaking his outstretched fist.
"Seize them!" the old man roared, stamping his feet. A few soldiers jumped to the front, one of them flourishing the butt end of his gun. The banner trembled, dropped, and disappeared in a gray mass of soldiers.
"Oh!" somebody groaned aloud. And the mother yelled like a wild animal. But the clear voice of Pavel answered her from out of the crowd of soldiers:
"Good-by, mother! Good-by, dear!"
"He’s alive! He remembered!" were the two strokes at the mother’s heart.
"Good-by, mother dear!" came from Andrey.
Waving her hands, she raised herself on tiptoe, and tried to see them. There was the round face of Andrey above the soldiers' heads. He was smiling and bowing to her.
"Oh, my dear ones! Andriusha! Pasha!" she shouted.
"Good-by, comrades!" they called from among the soldiers.
A broken, manifold echo responded to them. It resounded from the windows and the roofs.
The mother felt some one pushing her breast. Through the mist in her eyes she saw the little officer. His face was red and strained, and he was shouting to her:
"Clear out of here, old woman!"
She looked down on him, and at his feet saw the flag pole broken in two parts, a piece of red cloth on one of them. She bent down and picked it up. The officer snatched it out of her hands, threw it aside, and shouted again, stamping his feet:
"Clear out of here, I tell you!"
A song sprang up and floated from among the soldiers:
"Arise, awake, you workingmen!"
Everything was whirling, rocking, trembling. A thick, alarming noise, resembling the dull hum of telegraph wires, filled the air. The officer jumped back, screaming angrily:
"Stop the singing, Sergeant Kraynov!"
The mother staggered to the fragment of the pole, which he had thrown down, and picked it up again.
"Gag them!"
The song became confused, trembled, expired. Somebody took the mother by the shoulders, turned her around, and shoved her from the back.
"Go, go! Clear the street!" shouted the officer.
About ten paces from her, the mother again saw a thick crowd of people. They were howling, grumbling, whistling, as they backed down the street. The yards were drawing in a number of them.
"Go, you devil!" a young soldier with a big mustache shouted right into the mother’s ear. He brushed against her and shoved her onto the sidewalk. She moved away, leaning on the flag pole. She went quickly and lightly, but her legs bent under her. In order not to fall she clung to walls and fences. People in front were falling back alongside of her, and behind her were soldiers, shouting: "Go, go!"
The soldiers got ahead of her; she stopped and looked around. Down the end of the street she saw them again scattered in a thin chain, blocking the entrance to the square, which was empty. Farther down were more gray figures slowly moving against the people. She wanted to go back; but uncalculatingly went forward again, and came to a narrow, empty by-street into which she turned. She stopped again. She sighed painfully, and listened. Somewhere ahead she heard the hum of voices. Leaning on the pole she resumed her walk. Her eyebrows moved up and down, and she suddenly broke into a sweat; her lips quivered; she waved her hands, and certain words flashed up in her heart like sparks, kindling in her a strong, stubborn desire to speak them, to shout them.
The by-street turned abruptly to the left; and around the corner the mother saw a large, dense crowd of people. Somebody’s voice was speaking loudly and firmly:
"They don’t go to meet the bayonets from sheer audacity. Remember that!"
"Just look at them. Soldiers advance against them, and they stand before them without fear. Y-yes!"
"Think of Pasha Vlasov!"
"And how about the Little Russian?"
"Hands behind his back and smiling, the devil!"
"My dear ones! My people!" the mother shouted, pushing into the crowd. They cleared the way for her respectfully. Somebody laughed:
"Look at her with the flag in her hand!"
"Shut up!" said another man sternly.
The mother with a broad sweep of her arms cried out:
"Listen for the sake of Christ! You are all dear people, you are all good people. Open up your hearts. Look around without fear, without terror. Our children are going into the world. Our children are going, our blood is going for the truth; with honesty in their hearts they open the gates of the new road—a straight, wide road for all. For all of you, for the sake of your young ones, they have devoted themselves to the sacred cause. They seek the sun of new days that shall always be bright. They want another life, the life of truth and justice, of goodness for all."
[Illustration: "'Listen for the sake of Christ.'"]
Her heart was rent asunder, her breast contracted, her throat was hot and dry. Deep inside of her, words were being born, words of a great, all-embracing love. They burned her tongue, moving it more powerfully and more freely. She saw that the people were listening to her words. All were silent. She felt that they were thinking as they surrounded her closely; and the desire grew in her, now a clear desire, to drive these people to follow her son, to follow Andrey, to follow all those who had fallen into the soldiers' hands, all those who were left entirely alone, all those who were abandoned. Looking at the sullen, attentive faces around her, she resumed with soft force:
"Our children are going in the world toward happiness. They went for the sake of all, and for Christ’s truth—against all with which our malicious, false, avaricious ones have captured, tied, and crushed us. My dear ones—why it is for you that our young blood rose—for all the people, for all the world, for all the workingmen, they went! Then don’t go away from them, don’t renounce, don’t forsake them, don’t leave your children on a lonely path—they went just for the purpose of showing you all the path to truth, to take all on that path! Pity yourselves! Love them! Understand the children’s hearts. Believe your sons' hearts; they have brought forth the truth; it burns in them; they perish for it. Believe them!"
Her voice broke down, she staggered, her strength gone. Somebody seized her under the arms.
"She is speaking God’s words!" a man shouted hoarsely and excitedly. "God’s words, good people! Listen to her!"
Another man said in pity of her:
"Look how she’s hurting herself!"
"She’s not hurting herself, but hitting us, fools, understand that!" was the reproachful reply.
A high-pitched, quavering voice rose up over the crowd:
"Oh, people of the true faith! My Mitya, pure soul, what has he done? He went after his dear comrades. She speaks truth—why did we forsake our children? What harm have they done us?"
The mother trembled at these words and replied with soft tears.
"Go home, Nilovna! Go, mother! You’re all worn out," said Sizov loudly.
He was pale, his disheveled beard shook. Suddenly knitting his brows he threw a stern glance about him on all, drew himself up to his full height, and said distinctly:
"My son Matvey was crushed in the factory. You know it! But were he alive, I myself would have sent him into the lines of those—along with them. I myself would have told him: 'Go you, too, Matvey! That’s the right cause, that’s the honest cause!'"
He stopped abruptly, and a sullen silence fell on all, in the powerful grip of something huge and new, but something that no longer frightened them. Sizov lifted his hand, shook it, and continued:
"It’s an old man who is speaking to you. You know me! I’ve been working here thirty-nine years, and I’ve been alive fifty-three years. To-day they’ve arrested my nephew, a pure and intelligent boy. He, too, was in the front, side by side with Vlasov; right at the banner." Sizov made a motion with his hand, shrank together, and said as he took the mother’s hand: "This woman spoke the truth. Our children want to live honorably, according to reason, and we have abandoned them; we walked away, yes! Go, Nilovna!"
"My dear ones!" she said, looking at them all with tearful eyes. "The life is for our children and the earth is for them."
"Go, Nilovna, take this staff and lean upon it!" said Sizov, giving her the fragment of the flag pole.
All looked at the mother with sadness and respect. A hum of sympathy accompanied her. Sizov silently put the people out of her way, and they silently moved aside, obeying a blind impulse to follow her. They walked after her slowly, exchanging brief, subdued remarks on the way. Arrived at the gate of her house, she turned to them, leaning on the fragment of the flag pole, and bowed in gratitude.
"Thank you!" she said softly. And recalling the thought which she fancied had been born in her heart, she said: "Our Lord Jesus Christ would not have been, either, if people had not perished for his sake."
The crowd looked at her in silence.
She bowed to the people again, and went into her house, and Sizov, drooping his head, went in with her.
The people stood at the gates and talked. Then they began to depart slowly and quietly.
Part II
Chapter I
The day passed in a motley blur of recollections, in a depressing state of exhaustion, which tightly clutched at the mother’s body and soul. The faces of the young men flashed before her mental vision, the banner blazed, the songs clamored at her ear, the little officer skipped about, a gray stain before her eyes, and through the whirlwind of the procession she saw the gleam of Pavel’s bronzed face and the smiling sky-blue eyes of Andrey.
She walked up and down the room, sat at the window, looked out into the street, and walked away again with lowered eyebrows. Every now and then she started, and looked about in an aimless search for something. She drank water, but could not slake her thirst, nor quench the smoldering fire of anguish and injury in her bosom. The day was chopped in two. It began full of meaning and content, but now it dribbled away into a dismal waste, which stretched before her endlessly. The question swung to and fro in her barren, perplexed mind:
"What now?"
Korsunova came in. Waving her hands, she shouted, wept, and went into raptures; stamped her feet, suggested this and that, made promises, and threw out threats against somebody. All this failed to impress the mother.
"Aha!" she heard the squeaking voice of Marya. "So the people have been stirred up! At last the whole factory has arisen! All have arisen!"
"Yes, yes!" said the mother in a low voice, shaking her head. Her eyes were fixed on something that had already fallen into the past, had departed from her along with Andrey and Pavel. She was unable to weep. Her heart was dried up, her lips, too, were dry, and her mouth was parched. Her hands shook, and a cold, fine shiver ran down her back, setting her skin aquiver.
In the evening the gendarmes came. She met them without surprise and without fear. They entered noisily, with a peculiarly jaunty air, and with a look of gayety and satisfaction in their faces. The yellow-faced officer said, displaying his teeth:
"Well, how are you? The third time I have the honor, eh?"
She was silent, passing her dry tongue along her lips. The officer talked a great deal, delivering a homily to her. The mother realized what pleasure he derived from his words. But they did not reach her; they did not disturb her; they were like the insistent chirp of a cricket. It was only when he said: "It’s your own fault, little mother, that you weren’t able to inspire your son with reverence for God and the Czar," that she answered dully, standing at the door and looking at him: "Yes, our children are our judges. They visit just punishment upon us for abandoning them on such a road."
"Wha-at?" shouted the officer. "Louder!"
"I say, the children are our judges," the mother repeated with a sigh.
He said something quickly and angrily, but his words buzzed around her without touching her. Marya Korsunova was a witness. She stood beside the mother, but did not look at her; and when the officer turned to her with a question, she invariably answered with a hasty, low bow: "I don’t know, your Honor. I am just a simple, ignorant woman. I make my living by peddling, stupid as I am, and I know nothing."
"Shut up, then!" commanded the officer.
She was ordered to search Vlasova. She blinked her eyes, then opened them wide on the officer, and said in fright:
"I can’t, your Honor!"
The officer stamped his feet and began to shout. Marya lowered her eyes, and pleaded with the mother softly:
"Well, what can be done? You have to submit, Pelagueya Nilovna."
As she searched and felt the mother’s dress, the blood mounting to her face, she murmured:
"Oh, the dogs!"
"What are you jabbering about there?" the officer cried rudely, looking into the corner where she was making the search.
"It’s about women’s affairs, your Honor," mumbled Marya, terrorized.
On his order to sign the search warrant the mother, with unskilled hand, traced on the paper in printed shining letters:
"Pelagueya Nilovna, widow of a workingman."
They went away, and the mother remained standing at the window. With her hands folded over her breast, she gazed into vacancy without winking, her eyebrows raised. Her lips were compressed, her jaws so tightly set that her teeth began to pain her. The oil burned down in the lamp, the light flared up for a moment, and then went out. She blew on it, and remained in the dark. She felt no malice, she harbored no sense of injury in her heart. A dark, cold cloud of melancholy settled on her breast, and impeded the beating of her heart. Her mind was a void. She stood at the window a long time; her feet and eyes grew weary. She heard Marya stop at the window, and shout: "Are you asleep, Pelagueya? You unfortunate, suffering woman, sleep! They abuse everybody, the heretics!" At last she dropped into bed without undressing, and quickly fell into a heavy sleep, as if she had plunged into a deep abyss.
She dreamed she saw a yellow sandy mound beyond the marsh on the road to the city. At the edge, which descended perpendicularly to the ditch, from which sand was being taken, stood Pavel singing softly and sonorously with the voice of Andrey:
"Rise up, awake, you workingmen!"
She walked past the mound along the road to the city, and putting her hand to her forehead looked at her son. His figure was clearly and sharply outlined against the sky. She could not make up her mind to go up to him. She was ashamed because she was pregnant. And she held an infant in her arms, besides. She walked farther on. Children were playing ball in the field. There were many of them, and the ball was a red one. The infant threw himself forward out of her arms toward them, and began to cry aloud. She gave him the breast, and turned back. Now soldiers were already at the mound, and they turned the bayonets against her. She ran quickly to the church standing in the middle of the field, the white, light church that seemed to be constructed out of clouds, and was immeasurably high. A funeral was going on there. The coffin was wide, black, and tightly covered with a lid. The priest and deacon walked around in white canonicals and sang:
"Christ has arisen from the dead."
The deacon carried the incense, bowed to her, and smiled. His hair was glaringly red, and his face jovial, like Samoylov’s. From the top of the dome broad sunbeams descended to the ground. In both choirs the boys sang softly:
"Christ has arisen from the dead."
"Arrest them!" the priest suddenly cried, standing up in the middle of the church. His vestments vanished from his body, and a gray, stern mustache appeared on his face. All the people started to run, and the deacon, flinging the censer aside, rushed forward, seizing his head in his hands like the Little Russian. The mother dropped the infant on the ground at the feet of the people. They ran to the side of her, timidly regarding the naked little body. She fell on her knees and shouted to them: "Don’t abandon the child! Take it with you!"
"Christ has arisen from the dead," the Little Russian sang, holding his hands behind his back, and smiling. He bent down, took the child, and put it on the wagon loaded with timber, at the side of which Nikolay was walking slowly, shaking with laughter. He said:
"They have given me hard work."
The street was muddy, the people thrust their faces from the windows of the houses, and whistled, shouted, waved their hands. The day was clear, the sun shone brightly, and there was not a single shadow anywhere.
"Sing, mother!" said the Little Russian. "Oh, what a life!"
And he sang, drowning all the other sounds with his kind, laughing voice. The mother walked behind him, and complained:
"Why does he make fun of me?"
But suddenly she stumbled and fell in a bottomless abyss. Fearful shrieks met her in her descent.
She awoke, shivering and yet perspiring. She put her ear, as it were, to her own breast, and marveled at the emptiness that prevailed there. The whistle blew insistently. From its sound she realized that it was already the second summons. The room was all in disorder; the books and clothes lay about in confusion; everything was turned upside down, and dirt was trampled over the entire floor.
She arose, and without washing or praying began to set the room in order. In the kitchen she caught sight of the stick with the piece of red cloth. She seized it angrily, and was about to throw it away under the oven, but instead, with a sigh, removed the remnant of the flag from the pole, folded it carefully, and put it in her pocket. Then she began to wash the windows with cold water, next the floor, and finally herself; then dressed herself and prepared the samovar. She sat down at the window in the kitchen, and once more the question came to her:
"What now? What am I to do now?"
Recollecting that she had not yet said her prayers, she walked up to the images, and after standing before them for a few seconds, she sat down again. Her heart was empty.
The pendulum, which always beat with an energy seeming to say: "I must get to the goal! I must get to the goal!" slackened its hasty ticking. The flies buzzed irresolutely, as if pondering a certain plan of action.
Suddenly she recalled a picture she had once seen in the days of her youth. In the old park of the Zansaylovs, there was a large pond densely overgrown with water lilies. One gray day in the fall, while walking along the pond, she had seen a boat in the middle of it. The pond was dark and calm, and the boat seemed glued to the black water, thickly strewn with yellow leaves. Profound sadness and a vague sense of misfortune were wafted from that boat without a rower and without oars, standing alone and motionless out there on the dull water amid the dead leaves. The mother had stood a long time at the edge of the pond meditating as to who had pushed the boat from the shore and why. Now it seemed to her that she herself was like that boat, which at the time had reminded her of a coffin waiting for its dead. In the evening of the same day she had learned that the wife of one of Zansaylov’s clerks had been drowned in the pond—a little woman with black disheveled hair, who always walked at a brisk gait.
The mother passed her hands over her eyes as if to rub her reminiscences away, and her thoughts fluttered like a varicolored ribbon. Overcome by her impressions of the day before, she sat for a long time, her eyes fixed upon the cup of tea grown cold. Gradually the desire came to see some wise, simple person, speak to him, and ask him many things.
As if in answer to her wish, Nikolay Ivanovich came in after dinner. When she saw him, however, she was suddenly seized with alarm, and failed to respond to his greeting.
"Oh, my friend," she said softly, "there was no use for you to come here. If they arrest you here, too, then that will be the end of Pasha altogether. It’s very careless of you! They’ll take you without fail if they see you here."
He clasped her hand tightly, adjusted his glasses on his nose, and bending his face close to her, explained to her in haste:
"I made an agreement with Pavel and Andrey, that if they were arrested, I must see that you move over to the city the very next day." He spoke kindly, but with a troubled air. "Did they make a search in your house?"
"They did. They rummaged, searched, and nosed around. Those people have no shame, no conscience!" exclaimed the mother indignantly.
"What do they need shame for?" said Nikolay with a shrug of his shoulders, and explained to her the necessity of her going to the city.
His friendly, solicitous talk moved and agitated her. She looked at him with a pale smile, and wondered at the kindly feeling of confidence he inspired in her.
"If Pasha wants it, and I’ll be no inconvenience to you—"
"Don’t be uneasy on that score. I live all alone; my sister comes over only rarely."
"I’m not going to eat my head off for nothing," she said, thinking aloud.
"If you want to work, you’ll find something to do."
Her conception of work was now indissolubly connected with the work that her son, Andrey, and their comrades were doing. She moved a little toward Nikolay, and looking in his eyes, asked:
"Yes? You say work will be found for me?"
"My household is a small one, I am a bachelor—"
"I’m not talking about that, not about housework," she said quietly. "I mean world work."
And she heaved a melancholy sigh, stung and repelled by his failure to understand her. He rose, and bending toward her, with a smile in his nearsighted eyes, he said thoughtfully, "You’ll find a place for yourself in the work world, too, if you want it."
Her mind quickly formulated the simple and clear thought: "Once I was able to help Pavel; perhaps I will succeed again. The greater the number of those who work for his cause, the clearer will his truth come out before the people."
But these thoughts did not fully express the whole force and complexity of her desire.
"What could I do?" she asked quietly.
He thought a while, and then began to explain the technical details of the revolutionary work. Among other things, he said:
"If, when you go to see Pavel in prison, you tried to find out from him the address of the peasant who asked for a newspaper—"
"I know it!" exclaimed the mother in delight. "I know where they are, and who they are. Give me the papers, I’ll deliver them. I’ll find the peasants, and do everything just as you say. Who will think that I carry illegal books? I carried books to the factory. I smuggled in more than a hundred pounds, Heaven be praised!"
The desire came upon her to travel along the road, through forests and villages, with a birch-bark sack over her shoulders, and a staff in her hand.
"Now, you dear, dear man, you just arrange it for me, arrange it so that I can work in this movement. I’ll go everywhere for you! I’ll keep going summer and winter, down to my very grave, a pilgrim for the sake of truth. Why, isn’t that a splendid lot for a woman like me? The wanderer’s life is a good life. He goes about through the world, he has nothing, he needs nothing except bread, no one abuses him, and so, quietly, unnoticed, he roves over the earth. And so I’ll go, too; I’ll go to Andrey, to Pasha, wherever they live."
She was seized with sadness when she saw herself homeless, begging for alms, in the name of Christ, at the windows of the village cottages.
Nikolay took her hand gently, and stroked it with his warm hand. Then, looking at the watch, he said:
"We’ll speak about that later. You are taking a dangerous burden upon your shoulders. You must consider very carefully what you intend doing."
"My dear man, what have I to consider? What have I to live for if not for this cause? Of what use am I to anybody? A tree grows, it gives shade; it’s split into wood, and it warms people. Even a mere dumb tree is helpful to life, and I am a human being. The children, the best blood of man, the best there is of our hearts, give up their liberty and their lives, perish without pity for themselves! And I, a mother—am I to stand by and do nothing?"
The picture of her son marching at the head of the crowd with the banner in his hands flashed before her mind.
"Why should I lie idle when my son gives up his life for the sake of truth? I know now—I know that he is working for the truth. It’s the fifth year now that I live beside the woodpile. My heart has melted and begun to burn. I understand what you are striving for. I see what a burden you all carry on your shoulders. Take me to you, too, for the sake of Christ, that I may be able to help my son! Take me to you!"
Nikolay’s face grew pale; he heaved a deep sigh, and smiling, said, looking at her with sympathetic attention:
"This is the first time I’ve heard such words."
"What can I say?" she replied, shaking her head sadly, and spreading her hands in a gesture of impotence. "If I had the words to express my mother’s heart—" She arose, lifted by the power that waxed in her breast, intoxicated her, and gave her the words to express her indignation. "Then many and many a one would weep, and even the wicked, the men without conscience would tremble! I would make them taste gall, even as they made Christ drink of the cup of bitterness, and as they now do our children. They have bruised a mother’s heart!"
Nikolay rose, and pulling his little beard with trembling fingers, he said slowly in an unfamiliar tone of voice:
"Some day you will speak to them, I think!"
He started, looked at his watch again, and asked in a hurry:
"So it’s settled? You’ll come over to me in the city?"
She silently nodded her head.
"When? Try to do it as soon as possible." And he added in a tender voice: "I’ll be anxious for you; yes, indeed!"
She looked at him in surprise. What was she to him? With bent head, smiling in embarrassment, he stood before her, dressed in a simple black jacket, stooping, nearsighted.
"Have you money?" he asked, dropping his eyes.
"No."
He quickly whipped his purse out of his pocket, opened it, and handed it to her.
"Here, please take some."
She smiled involuntarily, and shaking her head, observed:
"Everything about all of you is different from other people. Even money has no value for you. People do anything to get money; they kill their souls for it. But for you money is so many little pieces of paper, little bits of copper. You seem to keep it by you just out of kindness to people."
Nikolay Ivanovich laughed softly.
"It’s an awfully bothersome article, money is. Both to take it and to give it is embarrassing."
He caught her hand, pressed it warmly, and asked again:
"So you will try to come soon, won’t you?"
And he walked away quietly, as was his wont.
She got herself ready to go to him on the fourth day after his visit. When the cart with her two trunks rolled out of the village into the open country, she turned her head back, and suddenly had the feeling that she was leaving the place forever—the place where she had passed the darkest and most burdensome period of her life, the place where that other varied life had begun, in which the next day swallowed up the day before, and each was filled by an abundance of new sorrows and new joys, new thoughts and new feelings.
The factory spread itself like a huge, clumsy, dark-red spider, raising its lofty smokestacks high up into the sky. The small one-storied houses pressed against it, gray, flattened out on the soot-covered ground, and crowded up in close clusters on the edge of the marsh. They looked sorrowfully at one another with their little dull windows. Above them rose the church, also dark red like the factory. The belfry, it seemed to her, was lower than the factory chimneys.
The mother sighed, and adjusted the collar of her dress, which choked her. She felt sad, but it was a dry sadness like the dust of the hot day.
"Gee!" mumbled the driver, shaking the reins over the horse. He was a bow-legged man of uncertain height, with sparse, faded hair on his face and head, and faded eyes. Swinging from side to side he walked alongside the wagon. It was evidently a matter of indifference to him whether he went to the right or the left.
"Gee!" he called in a colorless voice, with a comical forward stride of his crooked legs clothed in heavy boots, to which clods of mud were clinging. The mother looked around. The country was as bleak and dreary as her soul.
"You’ll never escape want, no matter where you go, auntie," the driver said dully. "There’s no road leading away from poverty; all roads lead to it, and none out of it."
Shaking its head dejectedly the horse sank its feet heavily into the deep sun-dried sand, which crackled softly under its tread. The rickety wagon creaked for lack of greasing.