Three days passed in incessant conversations with Sofya and Nikolay. The mother continued to recount tales of the past, which stubbornly arose from the depths of her awakened soul, and disturbed even herself. Her past demanded an explanation. The attention with which the brother and sister listened to her opened her heart more and more widely, freeing her from the narrow, dark cage of her former life.
On the fourth day, early in the morning, she and Sofya appeared before Nikolay as burgher women, poorly clad in worn chintz skirts and blouses, with birchbark sacks on their shoulders, and canes in their hands. This costume reduced Sofya’s height and gave a yet sterner appearance to her pale face.
“You look as if you had walked about monasteries all your life,” observed Nikolay on taking leave of his sister, and pressed her hand warmly. The mother again remarked the simplicity and calmness of their relation to each other. It was hard for her to get used to it. No kissing, no affectionate words passed between them; but they behaved so sincerely, so amicably and solicitously toward each other. In the life she had been accustomed to, people kissed a great deal and uttered many sentimental words, but always bit at one another like hungry dogs.
The women walked down the street in silence, reached the open country, and strode on side by side along the wide beaten road between a double row of birches.
“Won’t you get tired?” the mother asked.
“Do you think I haven’t done much walking? All this is an old story to me.”
With a merry smile, as if speaking of some glorious childhood frolics, Sofya began to tell the mother of her revolutionary work. She had had to live under a changed name, use counterfeit documents, disguise herself in various costumes in order to hide from spies, carry hundreds and hundreds of pounds of illegal books through various cities, arrange escapes for comrades in exile, and escort them abroad. She had had a printing press fixed up in her quarters, and when on learning of it the gendarmes appeared to make a search, she succeeded in a minute’s time before their arrival in dressing as a servant, and walking out of the house just as her guests were entering at the gate. She met them there. Without an outer wrap, a light kerchief on her head, a tin kerosene can in her hand, she traversed the city from one end to the other in the biting cold of a winter’s day. Another time she had just arrived in a strange city to pay a visit to friends. When she was already on the stairs leading to their quarters, she noticed that a search was being conducted in their apartments. To turn back was too late. Without a second’s hesitation she boldly rang the bell at the door of a lower floor, and walked in with her traveling bag to unknown people. She frankly explained the position she was in.
“You can hand me over to the gendarmes if you want to; but I don’t think you will,” she said confidently.
The people were greatly frightened, and did not sleep the whole night. Every minute they expected the sound of the gendarmes knocking at the door. Nevertheless, they could not make up their minds to deliver her over to them, and the next morning they had a hearty laugh with her over the gendarmes.
And once, dressed as a nun, she traveled in the same railroad coach, in fact, sat on the very same seat, with a spy, then in search of her. He boasted of his skill, and told her how he was conducting his search. He was certain she was riding on the same train as himself, in a second-class coach; but at every stop, after walking out, he came back saying: “Not to be seen. She must have gone to bed. They, too, get tired. Their life is a hard one, just like ours.”
The mother listening to her stories laughed, and regarded her affectionately. Tall and dry, Sofya strode along the road lightly and firmly, at an even gait. In her walk, her words, and the very sound of her voice — although a bit dull, it was yet bold — in all her straight and stolid figure, there was much of robust strength, jovial daring, and thirst for space and freedom. Her eyes looked at everything with a youthful glance. She constantly spied something that gladdened her heart with childlike joy.
“See what a splendid pine!” she exclaimed, pointing out a tree to the mother.
The mother looked and stopped. It was a pine neither higher nor thicker than others.
“Ye-es, ye-es, a good tree,” she said, smiling.
“Do you hear? A lark!” Sofya raised her head, and looked into the blue expanse of the sky for the merry songster. Her gray eyes flashed with a fond glance, and her body seemed to rise from the ground to meet the music ringing from an unseen source in the far-distant height. At times bending over, she plucked a field flower, and with light touches of her slender, agile fingers, she fondly stroked the quivering petals and hummed quietly and prettily.
Over them burned the kindly spring sun. The blue depths flashed softly. At the sides of the road stretched a dark pine forest. The fields were verdant, birds sang, and the thick, resinous atmosphere stroked the face warmly and tenderly.
All this moved the mother’s heart nearer to the woman with the bright eyes and the bright soul; and, trying to keep even pace with her, she involuntarily pressed close to Sofya, as if desiring to draw into herself her hearty boldness and freshness.
“How young you are!” the mother sighed.
“I’m thirty-two years old already!”
Vlasova smiled. “I’m not talking about that. To judge by your face, one would say you’re older; but one wonders that your eyes, your voice are so fresh, so springlike, as if you were a young girl. Your life is so bard and troubled, yet your heart is smiling.”
“The heart is smiling,” repeated Sofya thoughtfully. “How well you speak — simple and good. A hard life, you say? But I don’t feel that it is hard, and I cannot imagine a better, a more interesting life than this.”
“What pleases me more than anything else is to see how you all know the roads to a human being’s heart. Everything in a person opens itself out to you without fear or caution — just so, all of itself, the heart throws itself open to meet you. I’m thinking of all of you. You overcome the evil in the world — overcome it absolutely.”
“We shall be victorious, because we are with the working people,” said Sofya with assurance. “Our power to work, our faith in the victory of truth we obtain from you, from the people; and the people is the inexhaustible source of spiritual and physical strength. In the people are vested all possibilities, and with them everything is attainable. It’s necessary only to arouse their consciousness, their soul, the great soul of a child, who is not given the liberty to grow.” She spoke softly and simply, and looked pensively before her down the winding depths of the road, where a bright haze was quivering.
Sofya’s words awakened a complex feeling in the mother’s heart. For some reason she felt sorry for her. Her pity, however, was not offensive; not bred of familiarity. She marveled that here was a lady walking on foot and carrying a dangerous burden on her back.
“Who’s going to reward you for your labors?”
Sofya answered the mother’s thought with pride:
“We are already rewarded for everything. We have found a life that satisfies us; we live broadly and fully, with all the power of our souls. What else can we desire?”
Filling their lungs with the aromatic air, they paced along, not swiftly, but at a good, round gait. The mother felt she was on a pilgrimage. She recollected her childhood, the fine joy with which she used to leave the village on holidays to go to a distant monastery, where there was a wonder-working icon.
Sometimes Sofya would hum some new unfamiliar songs about the sky and about love, or suddenly she would begin to recite poems about the fields and forests and the Volga. The mother listened, a smile on her swinging her head to the measure of the tune or involuntarily yielding to the music. Her breast was pervaded by a soft, melancholy warmth, like the atmosphere in a little old garden on a summer night.
On the third day they arrived at the village, and the mother inquired of a peasant at work in the field where the tar works were. Soon they were descending a steep woody path, on which the exposed roots of the trees formed steps through a small, round glade, which was choked up with coal and chips of wood caked with tar.
Outside a shack built of poles and branches, at a table formed simply of three unplaned boards laid on a trestle stuck firmly into the ground, sat Rybin, all blackened, his shirt open at his breast, Yefim, and two other young men. They were just dining. Rybin was the first to notice the women. Shading his eyes with his hand, he waited in silence.
“How do you do, brother Mikhail?” shouted the mother from afar.
He arose and leisurely walked to meet them. When he recognized the mother, he stopped and smiled and stroked his beard with his black hand.
“We are on a pilgrimage,” said the mother, approaching him. “And so I thought I would stop in and see my brother. This is my friend Anna.”
Proud of her resourcefulness she looked askance at Sofya’s serious, stern face.
“How are you?” said Rybin, smiling grimly. He shook her hand, bowed to Sofya, and continued: “Don’t lie. This isn’t the city. No need of lies. These are all our own people, good people.”
Yefim, sitting at the table, looked sharply at the pilgrims, and whispered something to his comrades. When the women walked up to the table, he arose and silently bowed to them. His comrades didn’t stir, seeming to take no notice of the guests.
“We live here like monks,” said Rybin, tapping the mother lightly on the shoulder. “No one comes to us; our master is not in the village; the mistress was taken to the hospital. And now I’m a sort of superintendent. Sit down at the table. Maybe you’re hungry. Yefim, bring some milk.”
Without hurrying, Yefim walked into the shack. The travelers removed the sacks from their shoulders, and one of the men, a tall, lank fellow, rose from the table to help them. Another one, resting his elbows thoughtfully on the table, looked at them, scratching his head and quietly humming a song.
The pungent odor of the fresh tar blended with the stifling smell of decaying leaves dizzied the newcomers.
“This fellow is Yakob,” said Rybin, pointing to the tall man, “and that one Ignaty. Well, how’s your son?”
“He’s in prison,” the mother sighed.
“In prison again? He likes it, I suppose.”
Ignaty stopped humming; Yakob took the staff from the mother’s hand, and said:
“Sit down, little mother.”
“Yes, why don’t you sit down?” Rybin extended the invitation to Sofya.
She sat down on the stump of a tree, scrutinizing Rybin seriously and attentively.
“When did they take him?” asked Rybin, sitting down opposite the mother, and shaking his head. “You’ve bad luck, Nilovna.”
“Oh, well!”
“You’re getting used to it?”
“I’m not used to it, but I see it’s not to be helped.”
“That’s right. Well, tell us the story.”
Yefim brought a pitcher of milk, took a cup from the table, rinsed it with water, and after filling it shoved it across the table to Sofya. He moved about noiselessly, listening to the mother’s narrative. When the mother had concluded her short account, all were silent for a moment, looking at one another. Ignaty, sitting at the table, drew a pattern with his nails on the boards. Yefim stood behind Rybin, resting his elbows on his shoulders. Yakob leaned against the trunk of a tree, his hands folded over his chest, his head inclined. Sofya observed the peasants from the corner of her eye.
“Yes,” Rybin drawled sullenly. “That’s the course of action they’ve decided on — to go out openly.”
“If we were to arrange such a parade here,” said Yefim, with a surly smile, “they’d hack the peasants to death.”
“They certainly would,” Ignaty assented, nodding his head. “No, I’ll go to the factory. It’s better there.”
“You say Pavel’s going to be tried?” asked Rybin.
“Yes. They’ve decided on a trial.”
“Well, what’ll he get? Have you heard?”
“Hard labor, or exile to Siberia for life,” answered the mother softly. The three young men simultaneously turned their look on her, and Rybin, lowering his head, asked slowly:
“And when he got this affair up, did he know what was in store for him?”
“I don’t know. I suppose he did.”
“He did,” said Sofya aloud.
All were silent, motionless, as if congealed by one cold thought.
“So,” continued Rybin slowly and gravely. “I, too, think he knew. A serious man looks before he leaps. There, bo............