'Oh, get away with you,' laughed the deacon. 'Why bring Christ in so often when you don't believe in Him?'
'But I do believe—in my o^ way, of cou.rse, not in yours. Oh, Deacon, Deacon,' laughed the zoologist, putting his arm round the deacon's waist. 'How about it?' he went on happily. 'Do we go duelling tomorrow?'
'My cloth does not permit me, or I'd come.'
'Cloth? What cloth?'
'I'm ordained, by God's grace.'
'Oh, Deacon, Deacon,' said Von Koren again, laughing. 'I do like talking to you.'
'You say you have faith.' said the deacon. 'But what kind of faith is it? Now, I have an uncle, .an ordinary parish priest, and such is his faith that in time of drought he takes his umbrella and leather top-coat with him when he goes into the fields to pray for rain—to avoid being caught by the shower on the way home. There's faith for you. When he talks about Christ you can see a halo round his head, and all the peasants, men and women, weep torrents of tears. He could stop that cloud and put any of your "forces" to flight. Yes sir, faith moves mountams.'
The deacon laughed and clapped the zoologist on the shoulder.
'Yes indeed,' he went on. 'Here are you for ever teaching, plumbing the depths of the sea, dividing the weak from the strong, writing pamphlets and issiung challenges to duels. And you change nothing.
But one day some little old man may mumble one single word in the name of the Holy Ghost—or a new Mohammed will gallop t;p from Arabia brandishing his scimitar—and the whole bag of tricks will go up in smoke, and not one stone will be left on another in Europe, sec?'
'Now, that's just a lot of hot air, Deacon.'
'Faith without deeds is dead, and deeds without faith are still worse— they're no more than a waste of time.'
The doctor appeared on the sea front. Seeing deacon and zoologist, he went up to them.
'It all seems to be fixed up,' he panted. 'Govorovsky and Boyko will be seconds. They'll come along at five a.m. I say, isn't it cloudy!' he went on, looking at the sky. 'Can't see a thing. We're in for a shower.'
'You'll come along too, I trust,' Von Koren added.
'God forbid. I'm absolutely done in, anyway. Ustimovich will go in my place, I've already had a word with him.'
Far over the sea lightning flashed and the hollow rumbling of thunder was heard.
'Stifling, isn't it, before a storm?' Von Koren said. 'I bet you've already been round to Layevsky's and wept on his shoulder.'
'Why should I?' answered the doctor, disconcerted. 'What non- sense!'
He had walked up and do^ the boulevard and street several times before sundo^, hoping to meet Layevsky and feeling ashamed—both ofhis outburst and ofits sequel, his sudden impulse ofkind-heartedness. He wanted to make Layevsky a jocular apology, tell him offa bit, put his mind at rest, and say that duelling was a survival from medieval barbarism—but that this duel was a means of reconciliation devised by Providence itself. On the morrow these two most excellent, highly intelligent chaps would exchange shots, recognize each other's nobility of character and become friends. However, he had not run across Layevsky.
'Why should I go and see him?' Samoylenko repeated. 'I didn't insult him, it was he insulted me. But what made himjump on me like that, in heavens name? What harm have I done him? I go into thc drawing-room, and he suddenly flies off the handle and calls me a snooper. Tell me, what started him off? What did you say to him?'
'I told him his situation was hopeless, and I was right. It's only an honest man or a scoundrel who can extricate himself from any situa- tion whatever. For someone who wants to be an honest scoundrel—
both things at the same time—there's no escape. Well, gentlemen, it's eleven o'clock, and we have to be up early in the morning.'
A sudden squall arose. It whipped up the dust of the sea-front in a whirl, and howled, drowning the sea's roar.
'A storm,' said the deacon. 'We must go, there's dust in my eyes.'
They moved off.
'This means no sleep for me tonight,' Samoylenko sighed, holding his cap.
'Don't take it so much to heart,' laughed the zoologist. 'You can rest easy, this will come to nothing. Layevsky will be generous and shoot into the air—what else can he do? And I shan't fire at all, obviously. To find myself in the dock, wasting my time on Layevsky's account— it's just not worth the powder and shot. And by the way, what is the penalty for duelling?'
'Arrest, and—should your opponent die—up to three years' im- prisonment in a fortress.'
'Li the Peter and Paul dungeons?'
'No—in a military fortress, I think.'
'I ought to teach that young cub a lesson, though.'
Lightning flashed on the sea behind them, briefly illuminating house roofs and mountains. Near the boulevard the friends parted. The doctor had vanished into the darkness, his steps already sounding faint, when Von Koren shouted after him. 'I hope the weather won't spoil things tomorrow.'
'I shouldn't be surprised. God grant it may.'
'Good night.'
'Eh? What do you say?'
The howling gale and thunder-claps made his voice barely audible.
'Never mind,' the zoologist shouted, and hurried off home.
XVII
. . . In tny oppressed and attguished miiid Swarms of unhappy thoughts arise, While silent memories untvind Their endless scroll before my eyes. Reading, appalled, my life's sad tale, I tremble, curse the waste of days. But naught my bitter tears avail The gloomy record to erase.
Pushkin
Tomorrow morning they might kill him. Or they might make a laughing-stock of him—let him live, in other words. In either case he was done for. That degraded female might commit suicide in her despair and shame, or she might drag out a miserable existence—in either case she too was finished.
Such were Layevsky's thoughts as he sat at his desk late that night, still rubbing his hands together. Suddenly his window banged open, the gale swept into the room, and papers flew from the desk. Layevsky closed the window and bent do^ to pick them off the floor. He felt a new physical sensation, an awkward feeling never experienced before, and his movements seemed alien to him. He walked timorously, thrusting his elbows to each side, twitching his shoulders, and when he sat do^ at the desk he started rubbing his hands again. His body had lost its suppleness.
On the brink of death one writes to one's dear ones, remembering which Layevsky took up his pen.
'Dear Mother,' he wrote in a shaky hand.
He wanted to urge his mother by the merciful God of her faith to shelter and welcome kindly the unhappy woman whom he had dis- honoured—lonely, destitute and weak as she was. His mother should forget him. She should forgive all—atoning, at least in part, by her sacrifice for her son's grievous sin. But then he remembered his mother —a portly, massive old woman in her lace mob-cap—issuing into her garden from the house in the morning followed by her companion with a lap-dog. She had a way of hectoring gardener and servants, and her face was proudly supercilious—remembering which, he crossed out what he had written.
Bright lightning flashed in all three windows. Followed a deafening, pealing roll of thunder—at first dull, but then growling and crackling with such violence that the windows rattled. Layevsky stood up, \vent over to a window and laid his forehead against thc pane. A mighty storm raged outside. It was superb. On the horizon sheet lightiing flashed from clouds to sea in white ribbons, illuminating the high black waves far out. Lightning also flashed to right and left, and probably above the house too.