The White Terror and The Red Part 29

A POSTPONED WEDDING.

In June of that year, shortly before Makar escaped from prison, the unhappy Empress of Russia died after a long illness that was generally ascribed to her many years of jealousy and anguish. The Czar signified his intention to enter into morganatic wedlock with Princess Dolgoruki at once. His sons and brothers remonstrated with him, pleading for a postponement of the marriage until the end of a year's mourning; but he was pa.s.sionately devoted to the princess, with whom he had been on terms of intimacy for the past few years; he was determined to have these relations legitimatised, and, in view of the unrelenting campaign of the Terrorists, he felt that he could not do so too soon. Several members of the imperial family then went on a foreign tour, and the wedding was quietly solemnised on July 31 in Livadia, Crimea, where the Czar and his bride remained for a long honeymoon.

Pavel's and Clara's wedding was to take place in the early part of October. The relations of the s.e.xes among the Nihilists were based upon the highest ideals of purity, and the marriage bond was sacred in the best sense of the word, but they were not given to celebrating their weddings. When a couple became man and wife the fact was recognised as tacitly as it was made known, the adoption by the bride of her husband's name being out of the question in a world in which pa.s.sports and names were apt to be changed every day. Still, there were exceptions, and Pavel insisted upon being one of these. In his overflowing bliss he often cast the spartanism of the movement to the winds, and now he was bent upon indulging himself in the "romanticism" of having his wedding proclaimed at a gathering of his most intimate friends. This was to be done at the close of an important revolutionary meeting, at the same lodgings where we once saw Pavel, Zachar and My Lord at a gathering of military officers. A high government official who occupied the first floor of the same building was giving an elaborate reception which kept the house porters busy and the street in front crowded with carriages and idlers; so the central organisation of the Party of the Will of the People took advantage of the occasion and held one of its general meetings under cover of the excitement. The a.s.semblage, which was made up of about sixty or seventy persons of both s.e.xes, comprised nearly every member of the Executive Committee in town, and some candidates for admission to the Executive who were allowed to partic.i.p.ate in its deliberations without a vote. Most of the revolutionists present had taken part in attempts on the life of the Czar, as also in some of the recent a.s.sa.s.sinations. One man, a southerner, was the hero of the most sensational rescue during the past few years, having s.n.a.t.c.hed from the Kieff prison, in which he had contrived to obtain the position of head keeper, three leaders of an extensive revolutionary plot. This man, the Janitor and Purring Cat now const.i.tuted the Governing Board (a sub-committee clothed with dictatorial powers) of the Terrorists'

Executive.

The police were hunting for the people here gathered throughout the empire. Had the present meeting been discovered by spies the whole movement would have been seriously crippled for a considerable time.

Indeed, the complex conspiracies of the Will of the People were an element of fatal weakness as well as a manifestation of fascinating strength. The Terror absorbed the best resources of the party, necessitating highly centralised organisation, with the threads of a scattered national propaganda in the hands of a few "illegals" who were liable to be seized at any moment.

The street was full of police, but these had all they could do to salute the distinguished guests of the first floor and to take care of the carriages and the crowd of curiosity seekers.

Partly through Pavel's influence and partly because she was an "illegal"

and had produced a very favourable impression, Clara had made the acquaintance of many of the revolutionary leaders and been admitted as a probationary member of the Executive Committee. The present gathering was the first general meeting of the central body she had attended.

"So this is the Executive Committee!" she was saying to herself. This, then, was the mysterious force that people were talking about in timid whispers; that the Czar dreaded; that was going to make everybody free and good and happy. This was it, and she was attending its meeting. She could scarcely believe her senses that she actually was there. She knew many of the members, but she had never seen several of them together.

The present meeting almost benumbed her with a feeling of reverence, awe, and grat.i.tude. Even those she had met often since her arrival in St. Petersburg seemed different beings now, as though spiritualised into that mysterious force that seemed mightier than the Czar and holier than divinity. An overpowering state of exaltation, of something akin to the ecstasy of a woman upon taking the veil, came over her. Pavel was dearer than ever to her, but in her present mood their love impressed her as a jarring note. Self-sacrifice, not personal happiness, was what appealed to her, and by degrees she keyed herself up to a frame of mind in which her prospective married life seemed a gross profanation of the sanctuary to which she had been admitted.

"Let us postpone it, Pasha dear," she whispered to him, with a thrilling sense of sacrificing her happiness to the cause.

"Why?" he demanded in perplexity.

They went into the adjoining room. "What is the trouble? What's the trouble?" he demanded, light-heartedly.

"No trouble at all, dearest," she answered affectionately. "You are dearer than ever to me, but pray let us postpone it."

"But there must be some reason for it," he said with irritation.

"Don't be vexed, Pashenka. There is really no special reason. I simply don't feel like being married--yet. I want to give my life to the movement, Pasha. I am enjoying too much happiness as it is." She uttered it in grave, measured, matter-of-fact accents, but her hazel eyes reflected the uplifted state of her soul.

"Oh!" he exclaimed with a mixed sense of relief and adoration. "If that's what you mean, all I can say is that I am not worthy of you, Clara; but of course, the question of giving our lives to the cause has nothing to do with the question of our belonging to each other. Or, rather, it's one and the same thing."

She made no reply. The very discussion of the subject jarred on her.

"You are in a peculiar mood now, and you are an angel, anyhow, but to-morrow you'll see the matter in a different light."

"At any rate, let us postpone it, Pashenka." And she led the way back to the meeting room.

Many of the company knew of the expected announcement, and when they heard that it was not to take place they felt sorely disappointed. When the business of the meeting had been disposed of, a Terrorist named Sablin waggishly drank the health of Mlle. Yavner and the social revolution, to the accompaniment of the rapturous band of the first floor, and then he began to improvise burlesque verses on her as a newcomer, with allusions to her power over Pavel. This revolutionist was one of the "twin poets" of the party, his muse, which had a weakness for satire, being the gayer of the two. The "grave bard," whose name was Morosoff, was in Switzerland now. The two were great chums. As always, Sablin was the great convivial spirit of the company. When he was not versifying, he was making jokes, telling anecdotes or trying to speak Little-Russian to Purring Cat, who, being from Little Russia, answered his questions with smiling pa.s.sivity. Some of his rhymes related to Purring Cat's interminable side-whiskers, Zachar's habit of throwing out his chest as he walked, the reticence of the tall man with the Tartarian face, and, above all, the Janitor's explosions of wrath when one "was not continually leering around for spies."

The Janitor cursed him good-humouredly, without stuttering, and resumed his discussion with a man who looked like the conventional image of Christ, and with Urie, the tall blond man with typical Great-Russian features who had introduced Pavel to the Nihilist world and whom he still called "G.o.dfather." The gay poet then took to versifying on the "three blond beards" of this trio.

Zachar made the most noise, dancing cossack hops till the floor shook under his feet, singing at the top of his lungs, filling the large room with deafening guffaws. Baska, the light complexioned "housewife" of the dynamite shop, who looked like a peasant woman, was the greatest giggler of all the women present. Grisha, her pa.s.sport husband at that shop, and her real husband--a thin man with Teutonic features, known among the revolutionists as "the German"--were also there.

Sophia, the daughter of the former governor of St. Petersburg, sat by Clara's side, smiling her hearty good wishes upon her. She looked like a happy little girl, Sophia, her prominent cheeks aglow, and her clear blue self-possessed eyes full of affection and sweet-spirited penetration. She was engaged to Zachar, and Pavel's courtship had enlisted her tender interest. There were several other women at the gathering, two or three of them decidedly good-looking.

There was an unpublished poem, "Virgin Soil," by the "gay bard," which Clara had heard him recite and which portrayed, among other things, a Nihilist woman becoming a mother in her isolated cell. Her child is wrested from her arms to perish, and she goes insane. The episode, which is part of a bitter satire on a certain official, is based on fact. As Clara now thought of it and beheld the demented woman nursing a rag, a shudder pa.s.sed through her frame.

"Cheer up, Clara! Cheer up!" Zachar thundered. "We don't want any long faces to-night."

Clara smiled, a sorry smile, and Zachar went on hopping and laughing.

But when Sophia stroked her hand, smilingly, Clara buried her face in her bosom and gave way to a quick sob.

"What does it mean?" Pavel asked.

"Nothing," Clara answered, gleaming through her tears.

There were four or five Jews in the a.s.semblage, but Makar was not among them. His cherished dream had been realised at last. He was working in a secret printing office. Establishments of this sort were guarded with special solicitude, so in view of his absent-mindedness, Makar never left the place for fear of bringing back some spy. The other revolutionists who worked in the same printing shop and who were registered at the police station as residents of the house had each his or her day off. Makar alone was not registered. The porters of the house had never seen him, and the composing room was his prison.

The only other Jewess in the room was a dark insignificant looking woman named Hessia Helfman. She was touchingly bashful, so that at one time Clara had offered to befriend her. She had soon discovered, however, that the dark little Jewess was in charge of a most important conspiracy station. On closer acquaintance Hessia had proved to be quite talkative and of an extremely affectionate nature. Clara's attachment to her had become greater still when she had learned that Purring Cat was her husband. The great thing was that he was a Gentile and a n.o.bleman, although not a prince. Clara had told herself that the equality of Jew and Gentile and their intermarriage among socialists was a matter of course and that the circ.u.mstance attracted no special attention on her part, but she knew that it did.

As she now looked at Hessia and her husband, she said to herself, with a great sense of relief: "She is as good as I, anyhow. If she could marry the man she loves I can."

But her joy in this absolution from her self-imposed injunction soon faded away. To sacrifice her happiness seemed to her the highest happiness this evening. She would surpa.s.s Hessia. If there was a world in which platonic relations were called for theirs was that world. The image of a demented woman fondling a rag in her prison cell came back to her.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

A SECOND COURTSHIP.

The Czar was still in Livadia with his bride, abandoning himself to his second youth with a pa.s.sion that was tinged with the pathos of imminent tragedy, when Count Loris-Melikoff telegraphed to him a plea for the lives of two revolutionists who had been sentenced to death, one of these being Alexandre, the man in whose lodgings the gendarmes had found a diagram of the Imperial dining hall. The distinguished Armenian was contemplating reforms which he expected to leave no room for terrorism, and it was for the sake of these measures as well as of the Emperor himself, that he was averse to having the bitterness of the revolutionists quickened by new executions. If they only let the Czar live until those projects had been carried out, he thought, their conspiracies would lose all reason of existence; at any rate, the surrept.i.tious support which they received from men of high social position would be withdrawn.

But his despatch was followed by one from the Czarowitz, who, echoing the views of the anti-Melikoff party at court, urged his father not to show signs of weakness, and the sentence was allowed to stand.

At about nine o'clock in the morning of a cold autumn day, a fortnight after the meeting of the Executive Committee which Clara attended, Pavel stood on a chair nailing a clothes rack to the wall. The room was Clara's. It was on the fifth floor of a house near a corner, with windows commanding the two intersecting streets, where her window signals could be seen at a considerable distance. She rented it furnished, with samovar service, but the curtains and some bits of bric-a-brac had been bought by Pavel who took more interest in these things and was handier about the house than she. He himself lived in the house of a distant relative, an elderly widow, who took great pride in him and had no doubt that he led the life of the average young man of his cla.s.s, that is to say, he spent his nights and his mamma's rubles on an endless crop of wild oats. To Clara's landlady he was known as a brother of hers. On the present occasion he had found his fiancee out, but a mark on the door had told him that she would soon be back.

Presently she came in. She wore a tall fur cap and her cheeks gleamed, exhaling the freshness of girlish health and of the cold weather of the street, but she looked grave. Pavel threw away his hammer and pounced down upon her with open arms. She repulsed him gently.

"Stop," she whispered, drearily, unb.u.t.toning her cloak and drawing a newspaper from its inner pocket. "There is terrible news this morning."

The execution of Alexandre and the other revolutionist had taken place the day before, and the newspapers were allowed to print a very brief account of it--how they bade each other good-bye on the scaffold and how, when Alexandre saw the death-shroud on his friend, his eyes filled with tears. The two condemned men had been great chums for several years, Alexandre having once wrested the other from a convoy. Now they died together.

As Pavel read the account of the double execution, standing by the window, a flush of overpowering despair shot into his chest and diffused itself through his legs.

"They have choked them after all," he gasped out.

Clara, who sat at a table watching him, dropped her head on her folded arms, in a paroxysm of quick, bitter sobbing.

The few details in the newspaper report gave vividness to the grewsome scene. The two executed men had been among Pavel's most intimate friends. The image of Alexandre, his arms pinioned, looking on with tears while a white shroud was being slipped over his fellow-prisoner, was tearing at his heart with cruel insistence.

"Oh, it's terrible, Clarochka!" he moaned, dropping by her side, nestling to her, and bursting into tears in her bosom. Then, getting up, he took to walking back and forth, vehemently. "They have choked them, the blood-drinkers," he muttered. "They have done it after all." He fell silent, pacing the floor in despair, and then burst out once again: "They have choked them, the vampires."

"But war is war," she said, for something to say to him, her own face distorted with her struggle against a flow of tears.

"Oh, I don't know. All I do know is that they have been murdered, that they are no more." A minute or two later he turned upon her with a look full of ghastly malice. "War did you say? The government can't have enough of it, can it? Well, it shall have all the war it wants. The party has only shown it the blossoms; the berries are still to come."