In the street the frozen atmosphere enveloped her body invigoratingly, penetrated into her throat, tickled her nose, and for a second suppressed the breathing in her bosom. The mother stopped and looked around. Near to her, at the corner of the empty street, stood a cabman in a shaggy hat; at a slight distance a man was walking, bent, his head sunk in his shoulders; and in front of him a soldier was running in a jump, rubbing his ears.
“The soldier must have been sent to the store,” she thought, and walked off listening with satisfaction to the youthful crunching of the snow under her feet. She arrived at the station early; her train was not yet ready; but in the dirty waiting room of the third class, blackened with smoke, there were numerous people already. The cold drove in the railroad workmen; cabmen and some poorly dressed, homeless people came in to warm themselves; there were passengers, also a few peasants, a stout merchant in a raccoon overcoat, a priest and his daughter, a pockmarked girl, some five soldiers, and bustling tradesmen. The men smoked, talked, drank tea and whisky at the buffet; some one laughed boisterously; a wave of smoke was wafted overhead; the door squeaked as it opened, the windows rattled when the door was jammed to; the odor of tobacco, machine oil, and salt fish thickly beat into the nostrils.
The mother sat near the entrance and waited. When the door opened a whiff of fresh air struck her, which was pleasant to her, and she took in deep breaths. Heavily dressed people came in with bundles in their hands; they clumsily pushed through the door, swore, mumbled, threw their things on the bench or on the floor, shook off the dry rime from the collars of their overcoats and their sleeves and wiped it off their beards and mustaches, all the time puffing and blowing.
A young man entered with a yellow valise in his hand, quickly looked around, and walked straight to the mother.
“To Moscow, to your niece?” he asked in a low voice.
“Yes, to Tanya.”
“Very well.”
He put the valise on the bench near her, quickly whipped out a cigarette, lighted it, and raising his hat, silently walked toward the other door. The mother stroked the cold skin of the valise, leaned her elbows on it, and, satisfied, began again to look around at the people. In a few moments she arose and walked over to the other bench, nearer to the exit to the platform. She held the valise lightly in her hand; it was not large, and she walked with raised head, scanning the faces that flashed before her.
One man in a short overcoat and its collar raised jostled against her and jumped back, silently waving his hand toward his head. Something familiar about him struck her; she glanced around and saw that he was looking at her with one eye gleaming out of his collar. This attentive eye pricked her; the hand in which she held the valise trembled; she felt a dull pain in her shoulder, and the load suddenly grew heavy.
“I’ve seen him somewhere,” she thought, and with the thought suppressed the unpleasant, confused feeling in her breast. She would not permit herself to define the cold sensation that already pressed her heart quietly but powerfully. It grew and rose in her throat, filling her mouth with a dry, bitter taste, and compelling her to turn around and look once more. As she turned he carefully shifted from one foot to the other, standing on the same spot; it seemed he wanted something, but could not decide what. His right hand was thrust between the buttons of his coat, the other he kept in his pocket. On account of this the right shoulder seemed higher than the left.
Without hastening, she walked to the bench and sat down carefully, slowly, as if afraid of tearing something in herself or on herself. Her memory, aroused by a sharp premonition of misfortune, quickly presented this man twice to her imagination — once in the field outside the city, after the escape of Rybin; a second time in the evening in the court. There at his side stood the constable to whom she had pointed out the false way taken by Rybin. They knew her; they were tracking her — this was evident.
“Am I caught?” she asked, and in the following second answered herself, starting: “Maybe there is still —” and immediately forcing herself with a great effort, she said sternly: “I’m caught. No use.”
She looked around, and her thoughts flashed up in sparks and expired in her brain one after the other.
“Leave the valise? Go away?”
But at the same time another spark darted up more glaringly: “How much will be lost? drop the son’s word in such hands?”
She pressed the valise to herself trembling. “And to go away with it? Where? To run?”
These thoughts seemed to her those of a stranger, somebody from the outside, who was pushing them on her by main force. They burned her, and their burns chopped her brain painfully, lashed her heart like fiery whipcords. They were an insult to the mother; they seemed to be driving her away from her own self, from Pavel, and everything which had grown to her heart. She felt that a stubborn, hostile force oppressed her, squeezed her shoulder and breast, lowered her stature, plunging her into a fatal fear. The veins on her temples began to pulsate vigorously, and the roots of her hair grew warm.
Then with one great and sharp effort of her heart, which seemed to shake her entire being, she quenched all these cunning, petty, feeble little fires, saying sternly to herself: “Enough!”
She at once began to feel better, and she grew strengthened altogether, adding: “Don’t disgrace your son. Nobody’s afraid.”
Several seconds of wavering seemed to have the effect of joining everything in her; her heart began to beat calmly.
“What’s going to happen now? How will they go about it with me?” she thought, her senses strung to a keener observation.
The spy called a station guard, and whispered something to him, directing his look toward her. The guard glanced at him and moved back. Another guard came, listened, grinned, and lowered his brows. He was an old man, coarse-built, gray, unshaven. He nodded his head to the spy, and walked up to the bench where the mother sat. The spy quickly disappeared.
The old man strode leisurely toward the mother, intently thrusting his angry eyes into the mother’s face. She sat farther back on the bench, trembling. “If they only don’t beat me, if they only don’t beat me!”
He stopped at her side; she raised her eyes to his face.
“What are you looking at?” he asked in a moderated voice.
“Nothing.”
“Hm! Thief! So old and yet ——”
It seemed to her that his words struck her face once, twice, rough and hoarse; they wounded her, as if they tore her cheeks, ripped out her eyes.
“I’m not a thief! You lie!” she shouted with all the power of her chest; and everything before her jumped and began to whirl in a whirlwind of revolt, intoxicating her heart with the bitterness of insult. She jerked the valise, and it opened.
“Look! look! All you people!” she shouted, standing up and waving the bundle of the proclamations she had quickly seized over her head. Through the noise in her ears she heard the exclamations of the people who came running up, and she saw them pouring in quickly from all directions.
“What is it?”
“There’s a spy!”
“What’s the matter?”
“She’s a thief, they say!”
“She?”
“Would a thief shout?”
“Such a respectable one! My, my, my!”
“Whom did they catch?”
“I’m not a thief,” said the mother in a full voice, somewhat calmed at the sight of the people who pressed closely upon her from all sides.
“Yesterday they tried the political prisoners; my son was one of them, Vlasov. He made a speech. Here it is. I’m carrying it to the people in order that they should read, think about the truth.”
One paper was carefully pulled from her hands. She waved the papers in the air and flung them into the crowd.
“She won’t get any praise for that, either!” somebody exclaimed in a frightened voice.
“Whee-ee-w!” was the response.
The mother saw that the papers were being snatched up, were being hidden in breasts and pockets. This again put her firmly on her feet; more composed than forceful, straining herself to her utmost, and feeling h............