The Spy

"You're not sorry?"

"No." Yevsey quietly and angrily repeated the phrase that the officials often uttered. "For us, as for soldiers, there is neither mother, nor father, nor brother, only enemies of the Czar and our country."

"Well, of course," said Maklakov, and smiled. After a pause he added, "Really you are a 'good boy.'"

By his voice and smile Klimkov understood that the spy was making sport of him. He felt offended.

"Maybe I am sorry."

"Yes?"

"But if I have to serve honestly and faithfully – "

"Of course. I'm not disputing with you, you queer fellow."

Then Maklakov lighted a cigarette, and asked Yevsey:

"Why are you sitting here?"

"Oh, for no reason. I have nothing to do."

Maklakov slapped him on his knee, and suddenly said:

"You're a poor unfortunate, brother, little man."

Yevsey rose.

"Timofey Vasilyevich," he began in a trembling voice.

"Well, what is it?"

"Tell me – "

"Tell you what?"

"I don't know."

"Well, I don't either."

Klimkov mumbled:

"I am sorry for my cousin – and there's a girl there, too. They are all better than we, by God they are! Really and truly they're better."

Maklakov also rose to his feet, stretched himself, and stepping to the door remarked coldly:

"Go to the devil!"

Yevsey remained alone.

"Well, there," thought he, "there's another fellow – all alike. First they draw me on, then they push me away."

The vengeful feeling toward Olga awoke in him, and blended with his sense of ill-will toward all people, which found ample nourishment in his soul powerless to resist because of the poison of many insults. Yevsey vigorously set to work to enmeshing himself in a net of new moods, and he served now with a dull zeal hitherto unknown to him.

Gradually the night came upon which it had been decided to arrest Olga, Yakov, and all implicated in the affair of the printing-press whom Yevsey had succeeded in tracking. He knew that the printing-office was located in the wing of a house set in a garden and occupied by a large red-bearded man named Kostya and his wife, a stout, pock-marked woman. He also knew that Olga was the servant of these two people. Kostya's head was close cropped, and his wife had a grey face and roaming eyes. Upon Yevsey both produced the impression of witless persons, or persons who have lain in a hospital a long time.

"What fearful people they are!" he remarked to Yakov when he pointed them out one evening during a party at Makarov's lodging.

Yakov loved to boast of his acquaintances. He proudly shook his curly head, and explained with an air of importance:

"It's from their hard life. They work in cellars at night, where it is damp, and the air is close. They get their rest in prison. Both of them are fugitives, who live on other people's passports. Such a life turns everybody inside out and upside down. They're jolly people, too. When Kostya begins to tell about his life, you would think it is nothing but tears, but he talks so that when he is done, your sides ache from laughing. You can't trap such people very easily."

Klimkov decided to get a last look at Olga. He learned through what street the prisoners would be led, and went to meet them, trying to persuade himself that all this did not touch him. All the time he was thinking about the girl.

"She'll certainly be frightened. She'll cry."

He walked, as always, keeping in the shade. He tried once or twice to whistle carelessly, but never succeeded in checking the steady stream of recollections about Olga. He saw her calm face, her trusting eyes, listened to her somewhat broken voice, and remembered her words:

"It's no use for you to talk so badly about people, Klimkov. Why, have you nothing to reproach yourself with? Suppose everybody were to say what you say, 'It's hard for me to live, because everybody is so mean,' why, that would be ridiculous. Can't you see? Value yourself highly, but do not lower others. What right have you to do that?"

When listening to Olga Yevsey had always felt that she spoke the truth. Now, too, he had no cause to doubt it. But he was filled with the sheer desire to see her frightened, pitiful, and in tears.

From afar the wheels of an equipage began to rumble, the horses' shoes clattered. Klimkov pressed himself against the gate of a house, and waited. The carriage rolled by him. He looked at it unconcernedly, saw two gloomy faces, the grey beard of the driver, and the large mustache of the sergeant at his side.

"That's all," thought he, "and I didn't get a chance to see her."

But another carriage came rolling from the end of the street, and passed him quickly. Yevsey listened to the cut of the whip on the horse's body, and its tired snorting. The sounds seemed to hang motionless in the air. He thought they would hang there forever.

Olga with her head wrapped in a kerchief was sitting at the side of a young gendarme. On the coach box beside the driver rose the figure of the policeman. A familiar face darted by, white and good. Yevsey understood more than saw that Olga was perfectly calm, was not in the least frightened. For some reason he suddenly grew glad, and said to himself as if retorting to an unpleasant interlocutor:

"She won't cry, not she!"

Closing his eyes and smiling he stood a while longer. Then he heard steps and the jingling of spurs, and he comprehended that the men prisoners were being led along the street. He tore himself from the place, and trying to make his footsteps inaudible, quickly ran down the street, and turned the first corner. He kept up the same rapid pace almost the entire way to his home at which he arrived exhausted and covered with sweat.

The evening of the next day Filip Filippovich casting his blue rays upon Yevsey said ceremoniously in a thinner voice than usual:

"I congratulate you, Klimkov, on your fine achievement. I hope it will be the first link in a long chain of successes."

Klimkov shifted from one foot to the other, and quietly spread out his arms, as if desiring to free himself from the invisible chain.

There were a few spies in the room. They listened in silence to the sound of the saw, and looked at Yevsey, who without seeing them felt their glances upon his skin. He felt awkward and annoyed.

When Filip Filippovich had finished talking, Yevsey quietly asked him for a transfer to another city.

"That's nonsense, brother," said Filip Filippovich drily. "It's a shame to be a coward, especially at this time. What's the matter? Your first success, yet you want to be running off. I myself know when a transfer is necessary. Go."

"There, they've rewarded me," thought Klimkov, dismally and with a sense of hurt. But he was in error. The reward came from Sasha.

"Hey, you morel, you," he called to him, "there, take this."