The White Terror and The Red Part 33

"I beg your pardon," the officer returned, with a twinkle in his eye. "I once had the pleasure of arresting you. Your name is Andrey Ivanovitch Jeliaboff."

"Oh, in that case I am pleased to meet you," the prisoner said with playful chivalry.

Jeliaboff's arrest made a joyous stir not only in the gendarmerie, but also at court. Apart from the attempt to blow up an imperial train in the south, in which he had played the leading part, he had been described to the authorities as the most gifted and effective agitator in the movement.

The police at Little Garden Street were unaware of all this, but the conduct of the two men who had visited the cheese shop that afternoon seemed decidedly suspicious and lent a glare of colour to the irrelevancies that seemed to enfold the place.

The next morning Pavel called on the Koboseffs. As he entered the cheese store he saw that the adjoining room was crowded with police officers.

In his first shock he was only conscious of the gleam of uniforms, of Urie's and somebody else's voice and of his own sick despair. But the sick feeling ebbed away, leaving him in a state of desperate, pugnacious tranquillity, his mind on the revolver in his pocket.

"h.e.l.lo there!" he shouted, with the self-satisfied disrespect of a man of the better cla.s.ses addressing one of the lower, and at this he surveyed the store with an air of contempt, as much as to say: "What a den I did strike!"

"Wife," he heard Urie's voice, "there is a gentleman in the shop."

Baska, who had been calmly emptying a barrel of cheese into some boxes, wiped her hands upon her ap.r.o.n and stepped behind the counter.

"Is your Holland cheese any good?" Pavel asked, sniffing. "Are you sure you can give me a pound of decent stuff?"

She waited on him, simply, and after some more sniffing, at the wrapping paper as well as the cheese, he let her make up the package. As he walked toward the door his heart stood still for an instant.

He was allowed to go. Whether he was followed by spies he did not know.

At all events, when he approached his "legal" residence at the house of his high-born relative, after an hour's "circling," he felt perfectly free from shadowing. He was greatly perplexed to think of the way Urie and Baska had been allowed to continue in their role of a cheesemonger couple; but, at all events, even if the true character of their shop had not yet been discovered by the police officers he had seen there, it seemed to be a matter of minutes when it would be.

In the morning of that day, a few hours before Pavel called on the Koboseffs, the police captain of the Little Garden Street precinct had asked the prefect of St. Petersburg to have the cheese shop examined under the guise of a sanitary inspection. He was still uninformed of the arrest of the big fellow with the pointed beard, much less of the fact that he had proved to be one of the chieftains of the revolutionary organisation, but the story of the two suspicious-looking visitors at the cheese shop and their "circling" had made him uneasy. The Czar was expected to pa.s.s through Little Garden Street on Sunday, which was the next day, and one could not ascertain the real character of the Koboseffs and their business too soon. Nevertheless the prefect was slow to appreciate the situation. Indeed, it is quite characteristic of the despotic chaos of a regime like Russia's that on the one hand people are thrown into jail to perish there on the merest whim of some gendarme, and, on the other, action is often prevented by an excess of red tape and indolence in cases where there is ground for the gravest suspicion.

While hundreds of schoolboys and schoolgirls were wasting away in damp, solitary cells because they had been suspected of reading some revolutionary leaflet, the occupants of this bas.e.m.e.nt, in whose case suspicion was a.s.sociated with the idea of a plot on the life of the Czar, had not even been subjected to the summary search and questioning to which every resident in Russia is ever liable.

Finally, after considerable pleading on the part of the police captain, General Mrovinsky, a civil engineer of the Health Department, an elderly man with a kindly, genial face, was a.s.signed to make the feigned inspection.

"Your Excellency will please see if they are not digging a mine there,"

the police captain said to him, respectfully. "The Emperor often pa.s.ses that shop when he goes to the Riding Schools or to the Michal Palace, and that cheese dealer and his wife are quite a suspicious-looking couple. His Majesty is expected to pa.s.s the place to-morrow."

The general entered the cheese shop accompanied by the police captain, the captain's lieutenant and the head porter of the house. Koboseff came out of the inner rooms to meet them. He turned pale, but this seemed natural.

"His Excellency represents the Health Department," said the captain.

"There is dampness in the next house, and His Excellency wishes to see if your place is all right."

"I am sorry to trouble you," said General Mrovinsky, kindly. "But dampness is a bad thing to have in one's house, you know."

"There is none here that I know of, sir," Koboseff replied deferentially, "but, of course, a fellow must not be too sure, sir."

Baska stood in a corner of the shop, bending over a barrel. While the officers talked to Urie she threw a glance at the visitors over her shoulder and resumed her work.

The uniformed civil engineer made a close examination of the walls. The one facing the street was covered with planking, and Koboseff explained that he had had it done as a safeguard against dampness, but that there was none.

"But then cheese crumbs are apt to get into the cracks," urged General Mrovinsky, taking hold of one of the shelves along that wall. "They would decay there, don't you know, and that would be almost as bad as dampness, wouldn't it?" He then inspected the two living rooms. In the second of these he found a pile of hay.

"It's from our cheese barrels," Koboseff explained; and pointing at another pile he added: "And that's c.o.ke, sir."

General Mrovinsky picked up a coal, examined it, threw it back and wiped his fingers with some of the hay.

"Everything is all right," he said to the police officers, with a look of intelligence. He led the way back to the store and then back again to the middle room. Here he took a firm hold of the planking that lined the wall under the street window. He tried to wrench it off, but it would not yield, and he let it go.

"Everything is all right," he said to the captain, seating himself on a sofa. A trunk and some pieces of furniture were moved from their places and then put back. The general knew a merchant by the name of Koboseff, so he asked the cheese dealer if he was a relative of his. Urie said no, and after some conversation about the cheese business in general the officials went away.

"There is no mine in that place. You can make yourself perfectly easy about it," Mrovinsky said to the captain, as they made their way to the adjoining bas.e.m.e.nt.

It was while they were conversing leisurely, the old general seated on the lounge, that Pavel came in. He was watched narrowly, but he played his part well, and as the engineer had already intimated to the police officers that there was nothing suspicious about the premises he was not even shadowed.

Thus rea.s.sured, the police of the locality set to work preparing Little Garden Street for the Czar's drive to the Riding School. This included an investigation as to the character of the occupants of all the other shops and residences facing the street, as well as getting the pavement in good repair.

CHAPTER x.x.xII.

THE RED TERROR.

Meanwhile a reform measure which subsequently became known as "the const.i.tution of Loris-Melikoff" had been framed and submitted to the Czar by the Minister of the Interior. The project called for the convocation of a semi-representative a.s.sembly to be clothed with consultative powers. It was framed in guarded language, great pains having been taken to keep out anything like an allusion to parliamentary government.

"But it looks like the States-General," the Czar said to Loris-Melikoff.

The resemblance which the measure bore to the opening chapter in the history of the French revolution, where representatives of the three estates are convened in consultative parliament, made a disagreeable impression on him. Still, the project was ingeniously worded as a measure tending to "enhance the confidence of the monarch in his loyal subjects"; so, upon a closer reading, the Czar warmed to it, and returned the draft to Loris-Melikoff with his hearty approval. This took place at 12 o'clock on Sunday, March 13, 1881, one day after the search at the cheese store. It was decided to have the doc.u.ment read before the cabinet on Wednesday, after which it was to be published over the imperial signature in the _Official Messenger_.

The Czar was dressed in the uniform of the Sappers of the Guards, whose review he was about to attend at the Michal Riding Schools.

"I pray your Majesty to forego the trip," Loris-Melikoff said, solicitously.

The Czar smiled. Princess Dolgoruki had made a similar request, and by accentuating his danger they both only succeeded in challenging his courage. He felt as if in the light of their appeal staying at home would mean hiding. Instead of pleading with him for caution Loris-Melikoff should have made an effort to secure a suspension of hostilities in the enemy's camp. Had the revolutionists been aware of what was coming a truce on their part would have been a.s.sured. And then, little as the project to be divulged resembled a const.i.tution in the western sense of the word, it was yet the first approach to representative legislation in the history of modern Russia. The Nihilists were pledged to abandon their Terror the moment free speech had been granted, and although no reference to questions of this character was made in the "const.i.tution," certain liberties in that direction might have followed as a matter of course, as an offspring of the new spirit which the measure was expected to inaugurate. A distinguished revolutionary writer has pointed out how easy it would have been for Loris-Melikoff to bring his expectations to the knowledge of the Executive Committee of the Nihilists by setting a rumour on foot among the professional and intellectual cla.s.ses, many of whose representatives, as the Vice-Emperor knew but too well, were in touch with the central organization of the Will of the People. Perhaps this method of communicating with the revolutionists had not occurred to Loris-Melikoff; perhaps the iron-clad secrecy that enclosed his project was a necessary protection against the enemies of reform at court.

However it may have been, neither the revolutionists nor their liberal allies had any inkling as to the doc.u.ment about to be published in the _Official Messenger_. Instead, they saw the police and the gendarmerie continuing their riot of administrative violence; instead, they heard of an order by virtue of which a number of revolutionists who had served their term within prison walls at Kara, Siberia, and been admitted to partial freedom in the penal colony outside, had suddenly been put in irons and thrown back into their cells; whereupon some of them had committed suicide rather than return to the tortures of their former life. All of which had added gall to the bitterness of the revolutionists at large and whetted their distrust of the "crafty Armenian," as they called Loris-Melikoff.

The Czar's favourite coachman, a stalwart, handsome fellow, with a thick blond beard and clear blue eyes, sat on the box of the closed imperial carriage, waiting in the vast courtyard of the Winter Palace. An escort of six l.u.s.ty Cossacks, two gendarme officers and one of the several chiefs of police of the capital held themselves in readiness near by, the Cossacks on their mounts, the other three in their open sleighs.

Presently a great door flew open and the Emperor appeared, accompanied by an adjutant and a sergeant of the page corps. He wore a military cape-cloak and a helmet. While the page held the carriage door open, the Czar said to the coachman:

"By Songsters' Bridge!"

This was not his habitual route to the Riding Schools. Not that he was aware of the suspicions which the cheese shop on Little Garden Street had aroused. He had not the least idea of the existence of such a shop.

He had decided on the new route merely as a matter of general precaution, in case there was a mine somewhere. As to pistol shots he was sufficiently screened by the walls of his carriage as well as by the bodies of his cossacks and their horses.

That calm feeling of reverent affection with which the average Englishman hails his sovereign is unknown in Russia. But whether with reverence or mute imprecations, the coach of a Czar disseminates thrills of fright as it proceeds. The cavalcade of hors.e.m.e.n and sleighs, with the great lacquered carriage in the centre, was sailing and galloping along like a grim alien force, diffusing an atmosphere of terror. To those who saw it approaching the fiery cossacks on their fiery horses looked like a ferocious band of invaders, their every fibre spoiling for violence, rushing onward on an errand of conquest and b.l.o.o.d.y reckoning.

It was a cloudy day. The streets were covered with discoloured, brownish snow; the snow on the roofs, window-sills, cornices, gate-posts, was of immaculate whiteness, apparently devoid of weight, smooth and neat, as though trimmed by some instrument. There were few people along the route followed by the little procession and most of these were in their Sunday clothes. Now a civilian s.n.a.t.c.hed off his cap spasmodically, now a soldier drew himself up with all his might, as though trying to lift himself off his feet. Here and there a drunken citizen was staggering along. Every person the carriage pa.s.sed was scrutinised by every member of the escort, by the cossacks as well as by the chief of police and the gendarme officers. The Riding Schools were soon reached.

The Emperor left the building less than an hour later. He was accompanied by Grand Duke Michal, his brother, the two going to the Michal Palace, where they were to have lunch with the Czar's niece.

Sophia, the ex-governor's daughter, was watching the imperial carriage from a point of vantage. Presently she turned into a neighbouring street, and pa.s.sing a fair-complexioned young man in a dark overcoat, who held a white package in his hand, she raised her handkerchief to her nose. The young man then hurried away toward Catharine Ca.n.a.l. Three other men, one of them a gigantic looking fellow, stood at so many different points, and at sight of Sophia with her handkerchief to her nose, they all started in the same direction as the first man, while the young woman walked over to the Neva Prospect from which she crossed a bridge to the opposite side of Catharine Ca.n.a.l.