The White Terror and The Red Part 47

"Yes, ma'am. I am of the same rank as you. That puts a stop to the airs you have been giving yourself." It was in the course of the same conversation that he told her of his trip to Miroslav and of all that had happened to him there.

They were known here as brother and sister, his legal residence being in another place, but now both these residences were abandoned, and they moved into a new apartment, in another section of the town, which he took great pains to put in tasteful shape. Indeed, so elaborately fitted up was it that he fought shy of letting any of his fellow Nihilists know their new address. A table against one wall was piled with drawings, while standing in a conspicuous corner on the floor were a drawing-board and a huge portfolio--accessories of the role of a russified German artist which he played before the janitor of the house. Before he let her see it he had put a vase of fresh roses in the centre of the table.

When he and Clara entered their new home, he said in French, with a gallant gesture:

"Madame, permit me to introduce you."

He helped her off with her things and slid into the next room, where he busied himself with the samovar. She had with her a fresh copy of the _Will of the People_--a sixteen page publication of the size of the average weekly printed on fine, smooth paper; so she took it up eagerly.

Its front page was in mourning for President Garfield. An editorial notice signed by the revolutionary executive committee tendered an expression of grief and sympathy to the bereaved republic, condemning in vigorous language acts of violence in a land "where the free will of the people determines not only the law but also the person of the ruler."

"In such a land," the Nihilist Executive Committee went on to explain, "a deed of this sort is a manifestation of that spirit of despotism the effacement of which in Russia is the aim of our movement. Violence is not to be justified unless it be directed against violence."

The declaration made an exceedingly pleasant impression on Clara.

"Bravo! Bravo!" she called out to her husband, as she peered into the inside pages of the paper.

"What's the matter?" he asked her from the next room, distractedly, choking with the smoke of his freshly lit samovar.

She made no answer. The same issue of her party's organ devoted several columns to the anti-Jewish riots. She began to read these with acute misgivings, and, sure enough, they were permeated by a spirit of anti-Semitism as puerile as it was heartless. A bitter sense of resentment filled her heart. "As long as it does not concern the Jews they have all the human sympathy and tact in the world," she thought.

"The moment there is a Jew in the case they become cruel, short-sighted and stupid--everything that is bad and ridiculous."

"What's that you said, Clanya?" Pavel demanded again.

She had difficulty in answering him. "He is a Gentile after all," she said to herself. "There is a strain of anti-Semitism in the best of them." She was in despair. "What is to be done, then?" she asked herself. "Is there no way out of it?" The answer was: "I will bear the cross," and once again the formula had a soothing effect on her frame of mind. And because it had, the cross gradually ceased to be a cross.

She warmed to her husband with a sense of her own forgiveness, of the sacrifices she was making. She felt a new glow of tenderness for him.

And then, by degrees, things appeared in milder light. Pavel's rapture over her was so genuine, his devotion so profound, and the general relations between Jew and Gentile in the movement were marked by intimacies and attachments so sincere, that the anti-Semitic article could not have sprung from any personal taste or sentiment in the author. It was evidently a mere matter of revolutionary theory. Justly or unjustly, the fact was there: in the popular mind the Jews represented the idea of economic oppression. Now, if the ma.s.ses had risen in arms against them, did not that mean that they were beginning to attack those they considered their enemies? In the depth of her heart there had always lurked some doubt as to whether the submissive, stolid Russian ma.s.ses had it in them ever to rise against anybody. Yet here they had! Misguided or not, they had risen against an element of the population which they were accustomed to regard as parasites. Was not that the sign of revolutionary awakening she had fervently been praying for?

She went so far as to charge herself with relapsing into racial predilections, with letting her feelings as a Jewess get the better of her devotion to the cause of humanity. She was rapidly arguing herself into the absurd, inhuman position into which her party had been put by the editor of its official organ.

And to prove to herself that her views were deep-rooted and unshakable, she said to herself: "If they think in Miroslav I am the only person who could restore harmony to their circle, I ought to go there and try to persuade Elkin to give up those foolish notions of his." What they were saying about her in that town flattered her vanity. The thought of appearing in her revolutionary alma mater, in the teeth of the local gendarmes and police, an "illegal" known to underground fame, was irresistible. Her thirst of adventure in this connection was aroused to the highest pitch.

At eight o'clock the next morning she sat in a chair, looking at her husband, who was still in bed, sleeping peacefully. He had an early appointment, but she could not bring herself to wake him. She was going to do so a minute or two later, she pleaded with herself, and then they would have tea together. The samovar was singing softly in the next room. It was of her love and of her happiness it seemed to be singing.

Her joy in her honeymoon swelled her heart and rose to her throat. "I am too happy," she thought. As she remembered her determination to go to her native place, she added: "Yes, I am too happy, while Sophia is in her grave and Hessia is pining away in her cell. I may be arrested at any moment in Miroslav, but I am going to do my duty. I must keep Elkin and the others from abandoning the revolution."

CHAPTER XLII.

OMINOUS FOOTSTEPS.

Clara alighted from the train at a station immediately preceding Miroslav. She was met by Olga, the girl with the short hair and spa.r.s.e teeth who was engaged to the judge, the two reaching the city partly on a peasant's waggon, partly on foot. At sight of the familiar landscape Clara seemed weird to herself. It was her own Miroslav, yet she was worse than a stranger in it. She felt like a ghost visiting what was once his home. On the other hand, the unmistakable evidences of the recent riot contracted her heart with pain and brought back that Reproach.

Olga took her to a "conspiracy house." This was a bas.e.m.e.nt in the outskirts of the town, whose squatty windows faced the guardhouse of military stores and commanded a distant view of the river. The only other tenants of that courtyard were three sisters, all of them deaf and in a state of semi-idiocy. The bas.e.m.e.nt had been rented soon after Clara's flight. It consisted of three rooms, all very meagrely furnished. Lying under the sofa of the middle room was a wooden roller, which had once been intended for a secret printing office. One of the walls was hung with a disorderly pile of clothes of both s.e.xes--the shed disguises of pa.s.sing conspirators.

But very few members were allowed to visit her. Those who were saluted her with admiring looks and generally treated her as a heroine, which caressed her vanity most pleasantly. With a temerity born of an acquired habit of danger, not unmixed with some bravado, Clara was burning to visit her parents, her sister and her mother-in-law, and to take a look at her native neighbourhood. Her friends made an effort to keep her indoors. She would not be restrained, a.s.suring them that she was going to take good care of herself, but she finally offered to compromise on a meeting with her sister, provided she brought her little girl with her.

"I am crazy to see her," she said, meaning the child.

"See little Ruchele! Why you _are_ crazy, Clara!" Olga declared. "If you do all Miroslav will know the very next day that 'Aunt Clara' is in town."

"Nonsense. She won't know me. She has not seen me for more than a year.

Besides, I'll wear my veil. Oh, I must see her; don't oppose me, Olga, dear."

The meeting took place on a secluded bit of lawn under a sky suffused with the lingering gold of a dying sunset. And sure enough, Ruchele was extremely shy of the lady in black. When Clara caught her in her arms pa.s.sionately she set up a scream so loud that her mother wrenched her from her aunt's embrace for fear of attracting a crowd from a neighboring lane.

A debate between Clara and Elkin was to take place in Orlovsky's house the next evening. A few hours before the time set for the gathering Clara received an unexpected call from Elkin. This was their first meeting since her arrival, and she welcomed him with sincere cordiality.

She respected him as her first teacher of socialism. As to his love for her, which could still be read in his eyes, it flattered her now.

"Well," he said, trying to take a light tone, but betraying agitation.

"There is some news in town. Clara Yavner has been seen about."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that Clara Yavner has been seen about," he repeated with sarcastic articulation. And by way of putting a period to the sentence, he opened his lips into a lozenge-shaped sneer and leaned his head against the ma.s.s of hung-up clothes under which he sat on an oblong stool.

She was seated on another tabouret, with her back to the low window. His manner exasperated her. "But I have been out only once," she retorted calmly, controlling her anger, "and then I was heavily veiled."

"Well, could not some people have recognised you by your figure and carriage? I am sure I could. At any rate your cousin, Vigdoroff, was to see me a little while ago, for the express purpose of conveying this message to you, Clara. The gossips of Cuc.u.mber Market are whispering about your having been seen in town, 'and in addition to truths no end of fibs are being told.' Your mother is quite uneasy about it, and--well, Clara, at the risk of having it set down to a desire on my part to slip out of the debate, I should suggest that you take no further chances and leave Miroslav at once."

"Oh, nonsense. Am I not safe in this bas.e.m.e.nt at least?"

"Yes, I think you are, but if the police should get wind of your presence in town, why, they would not leave a stone unturned. They have been itching for a chance to tone down their reputation for stupidity ever since your disappearance."

She smiled and frowned at once.

"Besides," he went on, leaning back against the clothes and gazing at the ceiling, "if that debate is your chief mission here I am willing to capitulate in advance. You know I cannot debate with you, Clara. I am still in your power. My brain is in a whirl in your presence. It is at this moment. If that debate took place I should simply not know what I was talking about. You would not wish me to make an exhibition of the abject helplessness that comes over me when I see you, would you?"

His words, uttered in monotonous accents, contrasted so sharply with the air of mockery that had attended his former attempts at an avowal; they sounded so forlornly simple, his spirit was so piteously broken that he seemed a changed man. She was touched.

"Don't speak like that," she said kindly. "I'll do as you say. I'll leave Miroslav at once."

"Is there absolutely no hope for me, Clara?"

"I am no longer free, Elkin. I am a married woman," she said, flushing violently. "Let us change the subject. Tell me something about your Americans."

He dropped his eyes, and after a rather long pause he said, blankly:

"Well, pardon me, then. You have my best wishes, Clara. I say it from my heart. I shall be your warmest friend as long as I live. I confess I dreamed of your joining our party, so that I might be near you, and hoped that some day you would become mine."

"The right place for a revolutionist is here, in Russia, Elkin."