She ceased, turned away for an instant … the same submissive smile came back to her lips. 'Whether life's easy for me, you needn't ask,' was the meaning I fancied now in that smile.
The conversation passed to ordinary subjects. Musa told me that Punin had left a cat that he had been very fond of, and that ever since his death she had gone up to the attic and stayed there, mewing incessantly, as though she were calling some one … the neighbours were very much scared, and fancied that it was Punin's soul that had passed into the cat.
'Paramon Semyonitch is worried about something,' I said at last.
'Oh, you noticed it?'—Musa sighed. 'He cannot help being worried. I need hardly tell you that Paramon Semyonitch has remained faithful to his principles…. The present condition of affairs can but strengthen them.' (Musa expressed herself quite differently now from in the old days in Moscow; there was a literary, bookish flavour in her phrases.) 'I don't know, though, whether I can rely upon you, and how you will receive …'
'Why should you imagine you cannot rely upon me?'
'Well, you are in the government service—you are an official.'
'Well, what of that?'
'You are, consequently, loyal to the government.'
I marvelled inwardly … at Musa's innocence. 'As to my attitude to the government, which is not even aware of my existence, I won't enlarge upon that,' I observed; 'but you may set your mind at rest. I will make no bad use of your confidence. I sympathise with your husband's ideas … more than you suppose.'
Musa shook her head.
'Yes; that's all so,' she began, not without hesitation; 'but you see it's like this. Paramon Semyonitch's ideas will shortly, it may be, find expression in action. They can no longer be hidden under a bushel. There are comrades whom we cannot now abandon …'
Musa suddenly ceased speaking, as though she had bitten her tongue. Her last words had amazed and a little alarmed me. Most likely my face showed what I was feeling—and Musa noticed it.
As I have said already, our interview took place in the year 1849. Many people still remember what a disturbed and difficult time that was, and by what incidents it was signalised in St. Petersburg. I had been struck myself by certain peculiarities in Baburin's behaviour, in his whole demeanour. Twice he had referred to governmental action, to personages in high authority, with such intense bitterness and hatred, with such loathing, that I had been dumbfoundered….
'Well?' he asked me suddenly: 'did you set your peasants free?'
I was obliged to confess I had not.
'Why, I suppose your granny's dead, isn't she?'
I was obliged to admit that she was.
'To be sure, you noble gentlemen,' Baburin muttered between his teeth, '… use other men's hands … to poke up your fire … that's what you like.'
In the most conspicuous place in his room hung the well-known lithograph portrait of Belinsky; on the table lay a volume of the old Polar Star, edited by Bestuzhev.
A long time passed, and Baburin did not come back after the cook had called him away. Musa looked several times uneasily towards the door by which he had gone out. At last she could bear it no longer; she got up, and with an apology she too went out by the same door. A quarter of an hour later she came back with her husband; the faces of both, so at least I thought, looked troubled. But all of a sudden Baburin's face assumed a different, an intensely bitter, almost frenzied expression.
'What will be the end of it?' he began all at once in a jerky, sobbing voice, utterly unlike him, while his wild eyes shifted restlessly about him. 'One goes on living and living, and hoping that maybe it'll be better, that one will breathe more freely; but it's quite the other way—everything gets worse and worse! They have squeezed us right up to the wall! In my youth I bore all with patience; they … maybe … beat me … even … yes!' he added, turning sharply round on his heels and swooping down as it were, upon me: 'I, a man of full age, was subjected to corporal punishment … yes;—of other wrongs I will not speak…. But is there really nothing before us but to go back to those old times again? The way they are treating the young people now! … Yes, it breaks down all endurance at last…. It breaks it down! Yes! Wait a bit!'
I had never seen Baburin in such a condition. Musa turned positively white…. Baburin suddenly cleared his throat, and sank down into a seat. Not wishing to constrain either him or Musa by my presence, I decided to go, and was just saying good-bye to them, when the door into the next room suddenly opened, and a head appeared…. It was not the cook's head, but the dishevelled and terrified-looking head of a young man.
'Something's wrong, Baburin, something's wrong!' he faltered hurriedly, then vanished at once on perceiving my unfamiliar figure.
Baburin rushed after the young man. I pressed Musa's hand warmly, and withdrew, with presentiments of evil in my heart.
'Come to-morrow,' she whispered anxiously.
'I certainly will come,' I answered.
* * * * *
I was still in bed next morning, when my man handed me a letter from Musa.
'Dear Piotr Petrovitch!' she wrote: 'Paramon Semyonitch has been this night arrested by the police and carried off to the fortress, or I don't know where; they did not tell me. They ransacked all our papers, sealed up a great many, and took them away with them. It has been the same with our books and letters. They say a mass of people have been arrested in the town. You can fancy how I feel. It is well Nikander Vavilitch did not live to see it! He was taken just in time. Advise me what I am to do. For myself I am not afraid—I shall not die of starvation—but the thought of Paramon Semyonitch gives me no rest. Come, please, if only you are not afraid to visit people in our position.—Yours faithfully,
MUSA BABURIN.'
* * * * *
Half an hour later I was with Musa. On seeing me she held out her hand, and, though she did not utter a word, a look of gratitude flitted over her face. She was wearing the same clothes as on the previous day; there was every sign that she had not been to bed or slept all night. Her eyes were red, but from sleeplessness, not from tears. She had not been crying. She was in no mood for weeping. She wanted to act, wanted to struggle with the calamity that had fallen upon them: the old, energetic, self-willed Musa had risen up in her again. She had no time even to be indignant, though she was choking with indignation. How to assist Baburin, to whom to appeal so as to soften his lot—she could think of nothing else. She wanted to go instantly, … to petition, … demand…. But where to go, whom to petition, what to demand—this was what she wanted to hear from me, this was what she wanted to consult me about.
I began by counselling her … to have patience. For the first moment there was nothing left to be done but to wait, and, as far as might be, to make inquiries; and to take any decisive step now when the affair had scarcely begun, and hardly yet taken shape, would be simply senseless, irrational. To hope for any success was irrational, even if I had been a person of much more importance and influence, … but what could I, a petty official, do? As for her, she was absolutely without any powerful friends….
It was no easy matter to make all this plain to her … but at last she understood my arguments; she understood, too, that I was not prompted by egoistic feeling, when I showed her the uselessness of all efforts. 'But tell me, Musa Pavlovna,' I began, when she sank at last into a chair (till then she had been standing up, as though on the point of setting off at once to the aid of Baburin),'how Paramon Semyonitch, at his age, comes to be mixed up in such an affair? I feel sure that there are none but young people implicated in it, like the one who came in yesterday to warn you….'