Graham Greene (10 page)

When the negotiations were sufficiently advanced (20 September 1780), André proceeded up the Hudson River in the British sloop
Vulture
to hold a personal interview with Arnold. To avoid treatment as a spy, he wore his uniform, and professed to be aiming at an arrangement with respect to the sequestrated property of Colonel Beverley Robinson, an American loyalist. His letter to Arnold on the subject having been shown by the latter to Washington, the American Generalissimo so strongly protested against any interview that Arnold was compelled to resort to a secret meeting, which took place on the night of 21 September. Arnold then delivered to André full particulars respecting
the defences of West Point, and concerted with him the attack which the British were to make within a few days.

Meanwhile the
Vulture
had been compelled by the fire of the American outposts to drop further down the river, and André's boatmen refused to row him back. He spent the day at the farmhouse of Joshua Smith, a tool, but probably not an accomplice, of Arnold's, and had no alternative but to disguise himself as a civilian, which, as he was within the American lines, brought him within the reach of military law as a spy. He started the following morning with a pass in the name of Anderson signed by Arnold, and under the guidance of Smith, who only left him when he seemed past all danger.

By nine on the morning of the 23rd he was actually in sight of the British lines when he was seized by three American militiamen on the look-out for stragglers. Had he produced Arnold's pass, he would have been allowed to proceed, but he unfortunately asked his captors whether they were British, and, misunderstanding their reply, disclosed his character. He was immediately searched, and the compromising papers were found in his boots. Refusing the large bribes he offered for his release, the militiamen carried him before Colonel Jameson, the commander of the outposts, who had actually sent him with the papers to Arnold, when, at the instance of Captain Talmadge, André was fetched back, and the documents forwarded to Washington. Jameson, however, reported his capture to Arnold, and the news came just in time to enable the latter to escape to the British lines.

André acknowledged his name and the character of his mission in a letter addressed to Washington on 24 September, in which he declared: “Against my stipulation, my intention, and without my knowledge beforehand, I was conducted within one of your posts.” On 29 September he was brought before a military board convoked by Washington, which included
Lafayette and other distinguished officers. The board found, as it could not possibly avoid finding, that André had acted in the character of a spy. He was therefore sentenced to execution by hanging. Every possible effort was ineffectually made by the British Commander to save him, short of delivering up Arnold, which of course could not be contemplated. Washington has been unreasonably censured for not having granted him a more honourable death. To have done so would have implied a doubt as to the justice of his conviction.

André was executed on 2 October, meeting his fate with a serenity which extorted the warmest admiration of the American officers, to whom, even during the short period of his captivity, he had greatly endeared himself. A sadder tragedy was never enacted, but it was inevitable, and no reproach rests upon any person concerned except Arnold. Washington and André, indeed, deserve equal honour: André for having accepted a terrible risk for his country and borne the consequences of failure with unshrinking courage; and Washington for having performed his duty to his own country at a great sacrifice of his feelings.

RICHARD GARNETT

ANNA SEWARD

squeaky voice screamed, “Confession or no confession, you are a police spy!”

The revolutionist Nikita had pushed his way in front of Razumov, and faced him with his big, livid cheeks, his heavy paunch, bull neck, and enormous hands. Razumov looked at the famous slayer of gendarmes in silent disgust.

“And what are you?” he said, very low, then shut his eyes, and rested the back of his head against the wall.

“It would be better for you to depart now.” Razumov heard a mild, sad voice, and opened his eyes. The gentle speaker was an elderly man, with a great brush of fine hair making a silvery halo all round his keen, intelligent face. “Peter Ivanovitch shall be informed of your confession—and you shall be directed …”

Then turning to Nikita, nicknamed Necator, standing by, he appealed to him in a murmur—

“What else can we do? After this piece of sincerity he cannot be dangerous any longer.”

The other muttered, “Better make sure of that before we let him go. Leave that to me. I know how to deal with such gentlemen.”

He exchanged meaning glances with two or three men, who nodded slightly, then turning roughly to Razumov, “You have heard? You are not wanted here. Why don't you get out?”

The Laspara girl on guard rose, and pulled the chair out of the way unemotionally. She gave a sleepy stare to Razumov, who started, looked round the room and passed slowly by her as if struck by some sudden thought.

“I beg you to observe,” he said, already on the landing, “that I had only to hold my tongue. Today, of all days since I came
amongst you, I was made safe, and today I made myself free from falsehood, from remorse—independent of every single human being on this earth.”

He turned his back on the room, and walked towards the stairs, but, at the violent crash of the door behind him, he looked over his shoulder and saw that Nikita, with three others, had followed him out. “They are going to kill me, after all,” he thought.

Before he had time to turn round and confront them fairly, they set on him, with a rush. He was driven headlong against the wall. “I wonder how,” he completed his thought. Nikita cried, with a shrill laugh right in his face, “We shall make you harmless. You wait a bit.”

Razumov did not struggle. The three men held him pinned against the wall, while Nikita, taking up a position a little on one side, deliberately swung off his enormous arm. Razumov, looking for a knife in his hand, saw it come at him open, unarmed, and received a tremendous blow on the side of his head over his ear. At the same time he heard a faint, dull detonating sound, as if someone had fired a pistol on the other side of the wall. A raging fury awoke in him at this outrage. The people in Laspara's rooms, holding their breath, listened to the desperate scuffling of four men all over the landing; thuds against the walls, a terrible crash against the very door, then all of them went down together with a violence which seemed to shake the whole house. Razumov, overpowered, breathless, crushed under the weight of his assailants, saw the monstrous Nikita squatting on his heels near his head, while the others held him down, kneeling on his chest, gripping his throat, lying across his legs.

“Turn his face the other way,” the paunchy terrorist directed, in an excited, gleeful squeak.

Razumov could struggle no longer. He was exhausted; he had to watch passively the heavy open hand of the brute descend
again in a degrading blow over his other ear. It seemed to split his head in two, and all at once the men holding him became perfectly still—soundless as shadows. In silence they pulled him brutally to his feet, rushed with him noiselessly down the staircase, and, opening the door, flung him out into the street.

He fell forward, and at once rolled over and over helplessly, going down the short slope together with the rush of running rain water. He came to rest in the roadway of the street at the bottom, lying on his back, with a great flash of lightning over his face—a vivid, silent flash of lightning which blinded him utterly. He picked himself up, and put his arm over his eyes to recover his sight. Not a sound reached him from anywhere, and he began to walk, staggering, down a long, empty street. The lightning waved and darted round him its silent flames, the water of the deluge fell, ran, leaped, drove—noiseless like the drift of mist. In this unearthly stillness his footsteps fell silent on the pavement, while a dumb wind drove him on and on, like a lost mortal in a phantom world ravaged by a soundless thunderstorm. God only knows where his noiseless feet took him to that night, here and there, and back again without pause or rest. Of one place, at least where they did lead him, we heard afterwards; and, in the morning, the driver of the first south-shore tramcar, clanging his bell desperately, saw a bedraggled, soaked man without a hat, and walking in the roadway unsteadily with his head down, step right in front of his car, and go under.

When they picked him up, with two broken limbs and a crushed side, Razumov had not lost consciousness. It was as though he had tumbled, smashing himself, into a world of mutes. Silent men, moving unheard, lifted him up, laid him on the sidewalk, gesticulating and grimacing round him their alarm, horror, and compassion. A red face with moustaches stooped close over him, lips moving, eyes rolling. Razumov tried hard to understand the reason of this dumb show. To those
who stood around him, the features of that stranger, so grievously hurt, seemed composed in meditation. Afterwards his eyes sent out at them a look of fear and closed slowly. They stared at him. Razumov made an effort to remember some French words.

“Je suis sourd,”
he had time to utter feebly, before he fainted.

“He is deaf,” they exclaimed to each other. “That's why he did not hear the car …”

But hours before, while the thunderstorm still raged in the night, there had been in the rooms of Julius Laspara a great sensation. The terrible Nikita, coming in from the landing, uplifted his squeaky voice in horrible glee before all the company:

“Razumov! Mr Razumov! The wonderful Razumov! He shall never be any use as a spy on any one. He won't talk, because he will never hear anything in his life—not a thing! I have burst the drums of his ears for him. Oh, you may trust me. I know the trick. Ha! Ha! Ha! I know the trick.”

JOSEPH CONRAD

harsh steam siren blasted for two full minutes as we approached the mouth of the cutting, sent to the countless workmen about me a message of release; and it being then six o'clock of the night, they came pell-mell, from the heart of the earth before us as it seemed—some crowding in the ballast-trucks, some running, some clinging to the very buffers of the little engines, some going at their ease, as though labour were not distasteful to them. That which had been a pandemonium of order and
method became in a few moments a deserted scene of enterprise. None save the sentries guarded the mouth of the pit. Here and there, in the chasm below, flares began to burst up in garish yellow spirit flames; but those who worked by their light were the chosen few, the more skilled artisans, the engineers. And as we plunged downward and still downward, the great buttressed wall ever raising itself higher above us—even the skilled were rarely passed. A tremulous silence prevailed in the pit. From the distance there came a sound as of the throbbing of some mighty engine at work beneath the very sea toward which I knew we must be walking. But the man who led me downward had no desire to gratify my curiosity. Passing from the daylight to this cavernous gloom, he had become taciturn, morose, strangely self-occupied.