The White Terror and The Red Part 36

For an answer Clara looked her in the face, smiling shame-facedly. She did feel like an infant in her presence, although Sophia, with her small stature and fresh boyish face, looked the younger of the two. She did not know herself what she wanted to say. She was burning to cover her with kisses and to break into sobs on her breast, but Sophia was graver and more taciturn than usual to-day, so she held herself in check. Her pa.s.sion for tears was subdued. She sat by Sophia's side absorbed in her presence without looking her in the face, tingling with something like the feeling of people in a graveyard, in a moment of solemn ecstasy.

Clara came away burdened with unvoiced emotion. She said to herself that when she saw Pavel she would find relief in telling him how she adored Sophia and how thirsty her heart was because she had not unbosomed herself of these feelings to her; but when she and Pavel were alone she said nothing.

The porters of the house from which Sophia had vanished were asked at the police station whether they would be able to single her out in a street crowd. They had to admit that they were not sure whether they would. She had lived under their eye for eight months, but she had always managed to pa.s.s through the gate, where they were usually on duty, so as to leave no clear impression of her features on their minds.

Finally, on the sixth day, it was discovered that the proprietress of the little dry goods store had a clear recollection of her face. This woman, accompanied by a police officer, then spent hours driving about through the busiest streets, until, with a shout of mixed joy and fright, she pointed out Sophia in a public sleigh.

It was not many days before Kibalchich, the man with the Christlike face, who was one of the inventors and makers of the four bombs, and another revolutionist were arrested in a cafe, through an address found in Timothy Michailoff's note-book.

The trial of the six regicides so far captured, Jeliaboff, Sophia, Kibalchich, Hessia, Rysakoff, and Timothy Michailoff, was begun by a special Court of the Governing Senate for Political Cases, on April 8.

That Purring Cat and the man with the Tartarian face, both of whom were in prison now, had taken part in the digging of the Koboseff mine, was still unknown to the police. Nor had the authorities as yet been informed of the fact that another "political" in their hands--the undersized man who had played the part of shop-boy to the cheese-dealer--had had something to do with the same conspiracy.

Complete reports of the trial appeared in the newspapers, and the testimony and speeches of the accused were read and read again.

Jeliaboff ("Zachar") declined a lawyer, taking his defence in his own hands. His legal battles with the presiding judge, his resource, his tact and his eloquence, made him the central figure of the proceedings.

He began by challenging the court's jurisdiction in the case. "This court represents the crown, one of the two parties concerned," he said, "and I submit that in a contention between the government and the revolutionary party there could be only one judge--the people; the people either by means of a popular vote, or through its rightful representatives in parliament a.s.sembled, or, at least, a jury representing public conscience." Declarations of this kind, Kibalchich's narrative as to how the blind brutality of the government had transformed peaceful social workers into Terrorists, and the effect of simple, dignified sincerity which marked the conduct of all the prisoners produced such a profound impression, that at the time of the next important political trial scarcely any reports were allowed to be published.

The six regicides were sentenced to death, the execution of Hessia Helfman, who was about to become a mother, being postponed and later commuted. When the parents of Kolotkevich (Purring Cat) asked to be allowed to bring up their son's child, the request was refused on the ground that it was the child of two regicides and should be brought up under special care. The result of this special care was that the child, like its pardoned mother, soon died.

Sophia and the four condemned men died on the gallows, on a public square. They were taken to their death on two "shame waggons," dressed in convict clothes, each with a board inscribed with the words "criminal of state" across his or her breast. The procession was accompanied by a force of military large enough to conquer a country like Belgium. Sophia was the first woman executed on Russian soil since 1719.

CHAPTER x.x.xIV.

THE CZAR TAKES COURAGE.

Alexander III. and his court moved to the long-deserted imperial palace at Gatchina, a village 28 English miles from St. Petersburg. The young Czar and his entourage were in a state of nervous tension. Economically, the country was in the throes of hard times. Districts rich in the potentialities of industry and prosperity were in the grip of famine.

Driven by bad crops and extortionate taxes, thousands of village families were abandoning their homes to go begging. Cities were crowded with such mendicants from surrounding villages, and the industrial centres were full of workmen out of employment. Politically, a demoralising feeling of suspense hung over the empire. The ma.s.ses had seen one Czar--the ward of a vigilant guardian angel--prostrated. The crown's prestige was shaken, and the Czar's seeking refuge in a secluded village did anything but retrieve it. The number of _lese majeste_ cases had suddenly grown so large that by a special imperial ukase these offences were transferred from the publicity of the courts to the obscure depths of "justice by administrative order." From several places came reports of riots against the police, while the universities manifested their hostility to the throne quite openly. Subscription lists for a monument to the a.s.sa.s.sinated Czar were torn to pieces and those who circulated them were publicly hissed and insulted. The portents of turbulence were in the air.

Loris-Melikoff submitted to the new Czar the "const.i.tution" of which Alexander II. had approved an hour before his violent death. Alexander III. read it and wrote on the margin of the paper: "Very well conceived"; and two days later, after the project had been carried at a cabinet meeting by a vote of eight against five, the Czar, while conversing with his brother, Grand Duke Vladimir, on the measure to be introduced, said, joyfully:

"I feel as though a mountain had rolled off my shoulders."

But the conservative party at court had the support of a new power behind the throne. M. Pobiedonostzeff, formerly tutor of the present Czar and now his favourite adviser, was a man of much stronger purpose than Loris-Melikoff. He fought against the innovation tooth and nail, and the publication of it in the _Official Messenger_ was postponed from day to day. The leader of the Panslavists was invited from Moscow; every conservative influence was brought to bear upon a Czar who was absolutely incapable of forming his own opinion. All this was done in the strictest secrecy from Loris-Melikoff.

Meanwhile, during Easter week, seven days after the approval of the "const.i.tution" by a majority of the ministers and twelve days subsequent to the execution of the regicides, a furious anti-Jewish riot broke out in Elisavetgrad, a prosperous city in the south. A frenzied drink-crazed mob had possession of the town during two days, demolishing and pillaging hundreds of houses and shops, covering whole streets with debris and reducing thousands of people to beggary. And neighbouring towns and villages followed the example of the larger city.

The Czar took alarm. It looked like the prelude to a popular upheaval.

"It's only an anti-Semitic disturbance, your Imperial Majesty,"

Pobiedonostzeff rea.s.sured him. "There was one like that ten years ago, in Odessa."

The Elisavetgrad outbreak was, indeed, a purely local affair, but it happened at a time that was highly favourable to occurrences of that nature. Originally organised by some high-born profligates, victims of a gang of Jewish usurers, it had nothing to do with the general situation save in so far as there was in the hungry ma.s.ses a blind disposition to attack somebody; a disposition coupled with a feeling that the usual ties of law and order had been loosened. When, in addition, the target of a.s.sault happened to be the stepchild in Russia's family of peoples, the one forever kicked and cuffed by the government itself, the rioters'

sense of security was complete. Moreover, among the victims of Jewish usurers were hundreds of army officers and civil officials who lived beyond their means, and from these came a direct hint at impunity. The attack had been carefully planned, but the imbruted mob acted on its own logic, with the result that thousands of artisans, labourers, poor tradesmen, teachers, rabbis, dreamers, were plundered and ill-treated while the handful of usurers escaped.

The promise of impunity was fulfilled. Neighbouring towns and villages followed the example of Elisavetgrad, and ten days later, May 8-9, similar atrocities, but with a far greater display of fury and b.e.s.t.i.a.lity, occurred in Kieff, where a dozen murders and an enormous list of wounded and of outraged women was added to the work of devastation and plunder. The Kieff authorities encouraged all this in a thousand ways, while individual officers and men took part in the pandemonium of havoc and rape.

"Easy, boys," said the governor of the province, with an amused smile, as he drove past the busy rioters at the head of a procession of fashionable spectators.

Loris-Melikoff was scarcely to be held responsible for these occurrences. He had his own cares to worry him. The reins were fast slipping out of his hands. Indeed, the att.i.tude of governors, chiefs of police, military officers, toward the spreading campaign against the Jews was a matter of instinct. The "spirit of the moment," as it had become customary to denote the epidemic of anti-Jewish feeling in official circles, gleamed forth clear and unequivocal, and local authorities acted upon it on their own hook. The real meaning of this "spirit of the moment" lay in the idea that if there was a state of general unrest threatening the safety of the throne, it was spending itself on anti-Semitic ferocity; that if a storm-cloud was gathering over the crown, an electric rod had been found in the Chosen People.

The Czar took courage.

Two days after the Kieff riot he promulgated a manifesto, framed by Pobiedonostzeff, and proclaiming the continuance of unqualified iron-handed absolutism. The "const.i.tution" went into the archives.

Loris-Melikoff's public career had come to a close. General Ignatyeff, a corrupt time-server, was appointed Minister of the Interior and a policy of restriction and repression was adopted that brought back the days of Nicholas I.

Ignatyeff encouraged the "spirit of the moment" with all the means at his command. One of the very first things he did was to order the expulsion of thousands of Jews from Kieff. At the trial of some of the rioters the state attorney unceremoniously acted as advocate for the defendants.

The effect of all this upon the public mind was a foregone conclusion.

The general inference was that anti-Jewish riots met with the government's approval. The outrages pa.s.sed from Kieff to neighbouring cities; from there to Odessa; from Odessa to other sections of the south. They were spreading throughout the region in which Miroslav is located with the continuity of a regular crusade and with a uniformity of detail that was eloquent of a common guiding force.

It was a new phase of White Terrorism.

To Pavel the crusade against Clara's race was a source of mixed encouragement and anxiety.

"Hurrah, old fellow," he said to G.o.dfather one morning. "It does look as though the Russian people could kick, doesn't it?"

"Yes, if they can attack Jewish usurers, I don't see why they could not turn upon the government some day."

"And, while they are at it, upon the land-plundering n.o.bility, upon fellows like you and me, eh?" He poked Urie in the ribs gleefully.

In his conversations with Clara, however, the subject was never broached, and this gave him a sense of guilt and uneasiness. He could not help being aware that instead of usurers the chief target of attack in every riot, without a single exception, were Jewish artisans, labourers, teachers and the poorest tradesmen. And this, so far as Clara was concerned, meant that the common people of Pavel's race, for whose sake she was facing the solitary cell and the gallows, that these Christian people were brutally a.s.saulting and pillaging, reducing to beggary and murdering poor honest, innocent people of her own blood, Jews like her father, mother, sister, like herself.

But this bare fact did not fit in with Nihilist theory. That golden halo which had been painted about the common Christian people by the ecstasies of the anti-serfdom movement of twenty years ago had not yet faded. The Gentile ma.s.ses were still deified by the Nihilists. Whatever the peasant or workman of Slavic blood did was still sacred,--an instinctive step in the direction of liberty and universal happiness.

The Russian ma.s.ses were rioting; could there be a better indication of a revolutionary awakening? And if the victims of these riots happened to be Jews, then the Jews were evidently enemies of the people.

That the crusade was part and parcel of the "white terror" of the throne had not yet dawned upon the revolutionists.

As to Clara, she was so completely abandoned to her grief over the death of Sophia and the four men that so far the riots (no unheard-of thing in the history of the Jews by any means) had made but a feeble appeal to her imagination. Centuries seemed to divide her from her race and her past. The outbreaks seemed to be taking place in some strange, distant country.

The execution of the five regicides had been described quite fully in the _Official Messenger_ and the account had been copied in all other newspapers. Clara kept the issue of the _Voice_ containing the report in a book, and although she knew its salient pa.s.sages by heart, she often consulted the paper, now for this paragraph, now for that. There was a sacred mystery in the letters in which the description was printed.

"The five prisoners approached the priests almost at the same moment and kissed the cross; after which they were taken by the hangmen each to his or her rope." Clara beheld the ropes dangling and Sophia placed under one of them, but her aching heart coveted more vividness. Her imagination was making desperate efforts to reproduce the scene with the tangibility of life. Each time she read how the hangman, dressed in a red shirt, slipped the noose about Sophia's neck amid the roll of drums, and how he wrenched the stool from under her feet, so that she plunged with a jerk, and how the next instant her body hung motionless in the air, each time Clara read this she was smitten with an overpowering pang of pity and of helpless, aimless, heart-tearing affection. Sometimes she would fancy Sophia and her four comrades rescued from the hangman's hands a second before their execution, and carried triumphantly through the streets by an army of victorious revolutionists, but the next moment it would come back to her that this had not been the case, and then the re-awakening to reality was even more painful than the original shock.

If a rescuing force were now ready to attack the hangman and the thousand-bayoneted guard around him, it would be too late. Sophia was dead, irretrievably dead; there was n.o.body to rescue. And Clara's heart sank in despair. At such moments she would seek relief in those pa.s.sages of the report where the calmness of the condemned revolutionists was depicted. "Jeliaboff whispered to his priest, fervently kissed the cross, shook his hair and smiled. Fort.i.tude did not forsake Jeliaboff, Sophia and particularly Kibalchich (the man with the face of Christ) to the very moment of donning the white-hooded death-gown"--these pa.s.sages gave Clara thrills of religious bliss.

Pavel often talked to her about the execution, raved, cursed the government; but Clara usually remained gloomily taciturn. The wound in her soul was something too sacred to be talked about. Words seemed to her like sacrilege. Their hearts understood each other well enough, why, then, allow language to intrude upon their speechless communion? Some of his effusions and outbursts jarred on her. On the other hand, her silences made him restless.

"You'll go insane if you keep this up," he once said, irascibly.