out with suffering and pale as a sheet, covered with a fur rag. On his knees was an open book. On a bench beside the bed lay Katerina, with her arm about the old man’s chest and her head bent on his shoulder. She was looking at him with attentive, childishly wondering eyes, and seemed, breathless with expectation, to be listening with insatiable curiosity to what Murin was telling her. From time to time the speaker’s voice rose higher, there was a shade of animation on his pale face; he frowned, his eyes began to flash, and Katerina seemed to turn pale with dread and expectation. Then something like a smile came into the old man’s face and Katerina began laughing softly: Sometimes tears came into her eyes; then the old man tenderly stroked her on the head like a child, and she embraced him more tightly than ever with her bare arm that gleamed like snow, and nestled even more lovingly to his bosom.
At times Ordynov still thought this was part of his dream; in fact, he was convinced of it; but the blood rushed to his head and the veins throbbed painfully in his temples. He let go of the nail, got off the bed, and staggering, feeling his way like a lunatic, without understanding the impulse that flamed up like fire in his blood, he went to the door and pushed violently; the rusty bolt flew open at once, and with a bang and a crash he suddenly found himself in the middle of the landlord’s bedroom. He saw Katerina start and tremble, saw the old man’s eyes flash angrily under his lowering brows, and his whole face contorted with sudden fury. He saw the old man, still keeping close watch upon him, feel hurriedly with fumbling hand for a gun that hung upon the wall; then he saw the barrel of the gun flash, aimed straight at his breast with an uncertain hand that trembled with fury…. There was the sound of a shot, then a wild, almost unhuman, scream, and when the smoke parted, a terrible sight met Ordynov’s eyes. Trembling all over, he bent over the old man. Murin was lying on the floor; he was writhing in convulsions, his face was contorted in agony, and there was foam upon his working lips. Ordynov guessed that the unhappy man was in a severe epileptic fit. He flew, together with Katerina, to help him…
CHAPTER III
THE whole night was spent in agitation. Next day Ordynov went out early in the morning, in spite of his weakness and the fever that still hung about him. In the yard he met the porter again. This time the Tartar lifted his cap to him from a distance and looked at him with curiosity. Then, as though pilling himself together, he set to work with his broom, glancing askance at Ordynov as the latter slowly approached him.
“Well, did you hear nothing in the night?” asked Ordynov.
“Yes, I heard.”
“What sort of man is he? Who is he?”
“Self took lodgings, self should know; me stranger.”
“Will you ever speak?” cried Ordynov, beside himself with an access of morbid irritability.
“What did me do? Your fault — you frightened the tenants. Below lives the coffin-maker, he deaf, but heard it all, and his wife deaf, but she heard, and in the next yard, far away, they heard. I go to the overseer.”
“I am going to him myself,” answered Ordynov; and he went to the gate.
“As you will; self took the room…. Master, master, stay.” Ordynov looked round; the porter touched his hat from politeness.
“Well!”
“If you go, I go to the landlord.”
“What?”
“Better move.”
“You’re stupid,” said Ordynov, and was going on again. “Master, master, stay.” The porter touched his hat again and grinned. “Listen, master: be not wrathful; why persecute a poor man? It’s a sin to persecute a poor man. It is not God’s law — do you hear?”
“You listen, too: here, take that. Come, what is he?”
“What is he?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll tell you without money.”
At this point the porter took up his broom, brandished it once or twice, then stopped and looked intently, with an air of importance, at Ordynov.
“You’re a nice gentleman. If you don’t want to live with a good man, do as you like; that’s what I say.”
Then the Tatar looked at him still more expressively, and fell to sweeping furiously again.
Making a show of having finished something at last, he went up to Ordynov mysteriously, and with a very expressive gesture pronounced —
“This is how it is.”
“How — what?”
“No sense.”
“What?”
“Has flown away. Yes! Has flown away!” he repeated in a still more mysterious tone. “He is ill. He used to have a barge, a big one, and a second and a third, used to be on the Volga, and me from the Volga myself. He had a factory, too, but it was burnt down, and he is off his head.”
“He is mad?”
“Nay!… Nay!..,” the Tatar answered emphatically. “Not mad. He is a clever man. He knows everything; he has read many books, many, many; he has read everything, and tells others the truth. Some bring two roubles, three roubles, forty roubles, as much as you please; he looks in a book, sees and tells the whole truth. And the money’s on the table at once — nothing without money!”
At this point the Tatar positively laughed with glee, throwing himself into Murin’s interests with extreme zest.
“Why, does he tell fortunes, prophesy?”
“H’m!..,” muttered the porter, wagging his head quickly. “He tells the truth. He prays, prays a great deal. It’s just that way, comes upon him.”
Then the Tatar made his expressive gesture again.
At that moment someone called the porter from the other yard, and then a little, bent, grey-headed man in a sheepskin appeared. He walked, stumbling and looking at the ground, groaning and muttering to himself. He looked as though he were in his dotage.
“The master, the master!” the porter whispered in a fluster, with a hurried nod to Ordynov, and taking off his cap, he ran to meet the old man, whose face looked familiar to Ordynov; he had anyway met him somewhere just lately.
Reflecting, however, that there was nothing remarkable in that, he walked out of the yard. The porter struck him as an out-and-out rogue and an impudent fellow.
“The scoundrel was practically bargaining with me!” he thought. “Goodness knows what it means!”
He had reached the street as he said this.
By degrees he began to be absorbed in other thoughts. The impression was unpleasant, the day was grey and cold; flakes of snow were flying. The young man felt overcome by a feverish shiver again; he felt, too, as though the earth were shaking under Him All at once an unpleasantly sweet, familiar voice
