Dead Souls (52 page)

"Your Highness, I say that I will not leave this room until you have
accorded me mercy!" cried Chichikov as he clung to the Prince's leg
with such tenacity that, frockcoat and all, he began to be dragged
along the floor.

"Away with him, I say!" once more the Prince exclaimed with the sort
of indefinable aversion which one feels at the sight of a repulsive
insect which he cannot summon up the courage to crush with his boot.
So convulsively did the Prince shudder that Chichikov, clinging to his
leg, received a kick on the nose. Yet still the prisoner retained his
hold; until at length a couple of burly gendarmes tore him away and,
grasping his arms, hurried him—pale, dishevelled, and in that
strange, half-conscious condition into which a man sinks when he sees
before him only the dark, terrible figure of death, the phantom which
is so abhorrent to all our natures—from the building. But on the
threshold the party came face to face with Murazov, and in Chichikov's
heart the circumstance revived a ray of hope. Wresting himself with
almost supernatural strength from the grasp of the escorting
gendarmes, he threw himself at the feet of the horror-stricken old
man.

"Paul Ivanovitch," Murazov exclaimed, "what has happened to you?"

"Save me!" gasped Chichikov. "They are taking me away to prison and
death!"

Yet almost as he spoke the gendarmes seized him again, and hurried him
away so swiftly that Murazov's reply escaped his ears.

A damp, mouldy cell which reeked of soldiers' boots and leggings, an
unvarnished table, two sorry chairs, a window closed with a grating, a
crazy stove which, while letting the smoke emerge through its cracks,
gave out no heat—such was the den to which the man who had just begun
to taste the sweets of life, and to attract the attention of his
fellows with his new suit of smoked-grey-shot-with-flame-colour, now
found himself consigned. Not even necessaries had he been allowed to
bring away with him, nor his dispatch-box which contained all his
booty. No, with the indenture deeds of the dead souls, it was lodged
in the hands of a tchinovnik; and as he thought of these things
Chichikov rolled about the floor, and felt the cankerous worm of
remorse seize upon and gnaw at his heart, and bite its way ever
further and further into that heart so defenceless against its
ravages, until he made up his mind that, should he have to suffer
another twenty-four hours of this misery, there would no longer be a
Chichikov in the world. Yet over him, as over every one, there hung
poised the All-Saving Hand; and, an hour after his arrival at the
prison, the doors of the gaol opened to admit Murazov.

Compared with poor Chichikov's sense of relief when the old man
entered his cell, even the pleasure experienced by a thirsty, dusty
traveller when he is given a drink of clear spring water to cool his
dry, parched throat fades into insignificance.

"Ah, my deliverer!" he cried as he rose from the floor, where he had
been grovelling in heartrending paroxysms of grief. Seizing the old
man's hand, he kissed it and pressed it to his bosom. Then, bursting
into tears, he added: "God Himself will reward you for having come to
visit an unfortunate wretch!"

Murazov looked at him sorrowfully, and said no more than "Ah, Paul
Ivanovitch, Paul Ivanovitch! What has happened?"

"What has happened?" cried Chichikov. "I have been ruined by an
accursed woman. That was because I could not do things in
moderation—I was powerless to stop myself in time, Satan tempted me,
and drove me from my senses, and bereft me of human prudence. Yes,
truly I have sinned, I have sinned! Yet how came I so to sin? To think
that a dvorianin—yes, a dvorianin—should be thrown into prison
without process or trial! I repeat, a dvorianin! Why was I not given
time to go home and collect my effects? Whereas now they are left with
no one to look after them! My dispatch-box, my dispatch-box! It
contained my whole property, all that my heart's blood and years of
toil and want have been needed to acquire. And now everything will be
stolen, Athanasi Vassilievitch—everything will be taken from me! My
God!"

And, unable to stand against the torrent of grief which came rushing
over his heart once more, he sobbed aloud in tones which penetrated
even the thickness of the prison walls, and made dull echoes awake
behind them. Then, tearing off his satin tie, and seizing by the
collar, the smoked-grey-shot-with-flame-colour frockcoat, he stripped
the latter from his shoulders.

"Ah, Paul Ivanovitch," said the old man, "how even now the property
which you have acquired is blinding your eyes, and causing you to fail
to realise your terrible position!"

"Yes, my good friend and benefactor," wailed poor Chichikov
despairingly, and clasping Murazov by the knees. "Yet save me if you
can! The Prince is fond of you, and would do anything for your sake."

"No, Paul Ivanovitch; however much I might wish to save you, and
however much I might try to do so, I could not help you as you desire;
for it is to the power of an inexorable law, and not to the authority
of any one man, that you have rendered yourself subject."

"Satan tempted me, and has ended by making of me an outcast from the
human race!" Chichikov beat his head against the wall and struck the
table with his fist until the blood spurted from his hand. Yet neither
his head nor his hand seemed to be conscious of the least pain.

"Calm yourself, Paul Ivanovitch," said Murazov. "Calm yourself, and
consider how best you can make your peace with God. Think of your
miserable soul, and not of the judgment of man."

"I will, Athanasi Vassilievitch, I will. But what a fate is mine! Did
ever such a fate befall a man? To think of all the patience with which
I have gathered my kopecks, of all the toil and trouble which I have
endured! Yet what I have done has not been done with the intention of
robbing any one, nor of cheating the Treasury. Why, then, did I gather
those kopecks? I gathered them to the end that one day I might be able
to live in plenty, and also to have something to leave to the wife and
children whom, for the benefit and welfare of my country, I hoped
eventually to win and maintain. That was why I gathered those kopecks.
True, I worked by devious methods—that I fully admit; but what else
could I do? And even devious methods I employed only when I saw that
the straight road would not serve my purpose so well as a crooked.
Moreover, as I toiled, the appetite for those methods grew upon me.
Yet what I took I took only from the rich; whereas villains exist who,
while drawing thousands a year from the Treasury, despoil the poor,
and take from the man with nothing even that which he has. Is it not
the cruelty of fate, therefore, that, just when I was beginning to
reap the harvest of my toil—to touch it, so to speak, with the tip of
one finger—there should have arisen a sudden storm which has sent my
barque to pieces on a rock? My capital had nearly reached the sum of
three hundred thousand roubles, and a three-storied house was as good
as mine, and twice over I could have bought a country estate. Why,
then, should such a tempest have burst upon me? Why should I have
sustained such a blow? Was not my life already like a barque tossed to
and fro by the billows? Where is Heaven's justice—where is the reward
for all my patience, for my boundless perseverance? Three times did I
have to begin life afresh, and each time that I lost my all I began
with a single kopeck at a moment when other men would have given
themselves up to despair and drink. How much did I not have to
overcome. How much did I not have to bear! Every kopeck which I gained
I had to make with my whole strength; for though, to others, wealth
may come easily, every coin of mine had to be 'forged with a nail
worth three kopecks' as the proverb has it. With such a nail—with the
nail of an iron, unwearying perseverance—did
I
forge my kopecks."

Convulsively sobbing with a grief which he could not repress,
Chichikov sank upon a chair, tore from his shoulders the last ragged,
trailing remnants of his frockcoat, and hurled them from him. Then,
thrusting his fingers into the hair which he had once been so careful
to preserve, he pulled it out by handfuls at a time, as though he
hoped through physical pain to deaden the mental agony which he was
suffering.

Meanwhile Murazov sat gazing in silence at the unwonted spectacle of a
man who had lately been mincing with the gait of a worldling or a
military fop now writhing in dishevelment and despair as he poured out
upon the hostile forces by which human ingenuity so often finds itself
outwitted a flood of invective.

"Paul Ivanovitch, Paul Ivanovitch," at length said Murazov, "what
could not each of us rise to be did we but devote to good ends the
same measure of energy and of patience which we bestow upon unworthy
objects! How much good would not you yourself have effected! Yet I do
not grieve so much for the fact that you have sinned against your
fellow as I grieve for the fact that you have sinned against yourself
and the rich store of gifts and opportunities which has been committed
to your care. Though originally destined to rise, you have wandered
from the path and fallen."

"Ah, Athanasi Vassilievitch," cried poor Chichikov, clasping his
friends hands, "I swear to you that, if you would but restore me my
freedom, and recover for me my lost property, I would lead a different
life from this time forth. Save me, you who alone can work my
deliverance! Save me!"

"How can I do that? So to do I should need to procure the setting
aside of a law. Again, even if I were to make the attempt, the Prince
is a strict administrator, and would refuse on any consideration to
release you."

"Yes, but for you all things are possible. It is not the law that
troubles me: with that I could find a means to deal. It is the fact
that for no offence at all I have been cast into prison, and treated
like a dog, and deprived of my papers and dispatch-box and all my
property. Save me if you can."

Again clasping the old man's knees, he bedewed them with his tears.

"Paul Ivanovitch," said Murazov, shaking his head, "how that property
of yours still seals your eyes and ears, so that you cannot so much as
listen to the promptings of your own soul!"

"Ah, I will think of my soul, too, if only you will save me."

"Paul Ivanovitch," the old man began again, and then stopped. For a
little while there was a pause.

"Paul Ivanovitch," at length he went on," to save you does not lie
within my power. Surely you yourself see that? But, so far as I can, I
will endeavour to, at all events, lighten your lot and procure your
eventual release. Whether or not I shall succeed I do not know; but I
will make the attempt. And should I, contrary to my expectations,
prove successful, I beg of you, in return for these my efforts, to
renounce all thought of benefit from the property which you have
acquired. Sincerely do I assure you that, were I myself to be deprived
of my property (and my property greatly exceeds yours in magnitude), I
should not shed a single tear. It is not the property of which men can
deprive us that matters, but the property of which no one on earth can
deprive or despoil us. You are a man who has seen something of
life—to use your own words, you have been a barque tossed hither and
thither by tempestuous waves: yet still will there be left to you a
remnant of substance on which to live, and therefore I beseech you to
settle down in some quiet nook where there is a church, and where none
but plain, good-hearted folk abide. Or, should you feel a yearning to
leave behind you posterity, take in marriage a good woman who shall
bring you, not money, but an aptitude for simple, modest domestic
life. But this life—the life of turmoil, with its longings and its
temptations—forget, and let it forget YOU; for there is no peace in
it. See for yourself how, at every step, it brings one but hatred and
treachery and deceit."

"Indeed, yes!" agreed the repentant Chichikov. "Gladly will I do as
you wish, since for many a day past have I been longing to amend my
life, and to engage in husbandry, and to reorder my affairs. A demon,
the tempter Satan himself, has beguiled me and led me from the right
path."

Suddenly there had recurred to Chichikov long-unknown, long-unfamiliar
feelings. Something seemed to be striving to come to life again in
him—something dim and remote, something which had been crushed out of
his boyhood by the dreary, deadening education of his youthful days,
by his desolate home, by his subsequent lack of family ties, by the
poverty and niggardliness of his early impressions, by the grim eye of
fate—an eye which had always seemed to be regarding him as through a
misty, mournful, frost-encrusted window-pane, and to be mocking at his
struggles for freedom. And as these feelings came back to the penitent
a groan burst from his lips, and, covering his face with his hands, he
moaned: "It is all true, it is all true!"

"Of little avail are knowledge of the world and experience of men
unless based upon a secure foundation," observed Murazov. "Though you
have fallen, Paul Ivanovitch, awake to better things, for as yet there
is time."

"No, no!" groaned Chichikov in a voice which made Murazov's heart
bleed. "It is too late, too late. More and more is the conviction
gaining upon me that I am powerless, that I have strayed too far ever
to be able to do as you bid me. The fact that I have become what I am
is due to my early schooling; for, though my father taught me moral
lessons, and beat me, and set me to copy maxims into a book, he
himself stole land from his neighbours, and forced me to help him. I
have even known him to bring an unjust suit, and defraud the orphan
whose guardian he was! Consequently I know and feel that, though my
life has been different from his, I do not hate roguery as I ought to
hate it, and that my nature is coarse, and that in me there is no real
love for what is good, no real spark of that beautiful instinct for
well-doing which becomes a second nature, a settled habit. Also, never
do I yearn to strive for what is right as I yearn to acquire property.
This is no more than the truth. What else could I do but confess it?"