Condemned as a Nihilist Part 6

"What are the beaters doing?" Mr. Robson asked as they hastily ate their dinner.

"They have brought their bread with them," the colonel said, "and our friends here have provided a deer almost as fine as that which carried off the twelve bullets. It was roasting over a fire in the forest when we went past, and I saw some black bottles which I guessed were vodka."

"Yes, colonel, I ordered that they should have a gla.s.s each with their dinner, and another gla.s.s when they had done this afternoon."

"They would not mind being on fatigue duty every day through the winter on those terms," the colonel said. "It is better for them than soldiering. We must mind that we don't shoot any of them, gentlemen. The lives of the Czar's soldiers are not to be lightly sacrificed, and next time, you know, the whole of the bullets may not hit the mark as they did this morning."

"There really is some danger in it," Mr. Robson said to G.o.dfrey, who was sitting next to him; "in fact, I should say there was a good deal of danger. However, I fancy the beaters all throw themselves down flat when they hear the crack of the first rifle."

"I see most of them have got a gun as well as a rifle."

"Yes, there is no saying what may come along, and, indeed, they are more likely to get birds than fur. I was told there are a good many elk in the forest, and the peasants have been bringing an unusual number in lately. A friend of mine shot two last week; but as our party did not get one in their first drive they are not likely to get any afterwards.

Occasionally in these big drives a good many animals are inclosed, but as a rule the noise the soldiers make as they move along to take up their places is enough to frighten every creature within a couple of miles. I told you you were not likely to have to draw a trigger.

Expeditions like this are rather an excuse for a couple of days' fun than anything else. The real hunting is more quiet. Men who are fond of it have peasants in their pay all over the country, and if one of these hears of a bear or an elk anywhere in his neighbourhood he brings in the news at once, and then one or two men drive out to the village, where beaters will be in readiness for them, and have the hunt to themselves.

"I used to do a good deal of it the first few years I came out, but it is bitter cold work waiting for hours till a beast comes past, or trying to crawl up to him. After all, there is no great fun in putting a bullet into a creature as big as a horse at a distance of thirty or forty yards. But there, they are making a move. They are going to drink the coffee and vodka standing, which is wise, for after standing in the snow for four hours, as they have been doing, they are apt to get so sleepy after a warm meal that if we were to stop here much longer you would find half the number would not make a start at all."

The sledges were brought up, and there was a three miles drive through the forest. Then the shooters were placed in a line, some forty or fifty yards apart, each taking his station behind a tree. Then a small bugler sounded a note. G.o.dfrey heard a reply a long distance off.

Three-quarters of an hour pa.s.sed without any further sound being heard, and then G.o.dfrey, who had been stamping his feet and swinging his arms to keep himself warm, heard a confused murmur. Looking along the line he saw that the others were all on the alert, and he accordingly took up his gun and began to gaze across the snow. The right-hand barrel was loaded with shot, the left with ball. Presently a shot rang out away on his right, followed almost immediately afterwards by another. After this evidence that there must be something in the forest he watched more eagerly for signs of life. Presently he saw a hare coming loping along.

From time to time it stopped and turned its head to listen, and then came on again. He soon saw that it was bearing to the left, and that it was not going to come within his range. He watched it disappear among the trees, and two minutes later heard a shot. Others followed to the right and left of him, and presently a hare, which he had not noticed, dashed past at full speed, almost touching his legs. He was so startled for the moment that the hare had got some distance before he had turned round and was ready to fire, and he was in no way surprised to see it dash on unharmed by his shot. When there was a pause in the firing the shouting recommenced, this time not far distant, and he soon saw men making their way towards him through the trees.

"It is all over now," Mr. Robson shouted from the next tree. "If they have not done better elsewhere than we have here the bag is not a very large one."

"Did you shoot anything, Mr. Robson?"

"I knocked a hare over; that is the only thing I have seen. What have you done?"

"I think I succeeded in frightening a hare, but that was all," G.o.dfrey laughed. "It ran almost between my legs before I saw it, and I think it startled me quite as much as my shot alarmed it."

The bugle sounded again, and the party were presently collected round the colonel. The result of the beat was five hares, and a small stag that had fallen to the gun of Mr. White.

"Much cry and little wool," Mr. Robson said. "A hundred beaters, twenty guns, and six head of game."

Another short beat was organized, resulting in two stags and three more hares. One of the stags and the three hares were placed on a sledge to be taken back to the farm-house, and the rest of the game was given to the soldiers. A gla.s.s of vodka was served out to each of them, and, highly pleased with their day's work, the men slung the deer to poles and set out on their march of eight miles back to the town.

"They will have done a tremendous day's work by the time they have finished," G.o.dfrey said. "Eight miles out and eight miles back, and three beats, which must have cost them four or five miles' walking at least. They must have gone over thirty miles through the snow."

"It won't be as much as that, though it will be a long day's work," the colonel said. "They came out yesterday evening and slept in a barn.

Another company come out to-night to take their place."

It was already dark by the time the party reached the farm-house, and after a cup of coffee all round they began to prepare the dinner. They were like a party of school-boys, laughing, joking, and playing tricks with each other. Two of them undertook the preparation of hare-soup. Two others were appointed to roast a quarter of venison, keeping it turning as it hung by a cord in front of the fire, and being told that should it burn from want of basting they would forfeit their share of it. The colonel undertook the mixing of punch, and the odour of lemons, rum, and other spirits soon mingled with that of the cooking. G.o.dfrey was set to whip eggs for a gigantic omelette, and most of the others had some task or other a.s.signed to them, the farmer's wife and her a.s.sistants not being allowed to have anything to do with the matter.

The dinner was a great success. After it was over a huge bowl of punch was placed on the table, and after the health of the Czar and that of the Queen of England had been drunk, speeches were made, songs were sung, and stories told. While this was going on, the farmer brought in a dozen trusses of straw. These his wife and the maids opened and distributed along both sides of the room, laying blankets over them. It was not long before G.o.dfrey began to feel very drowsy, the result of the day's work in the cold, a good dinner, the heated air of the room and the din, and would have gladly lain down; but his movement to leave the table was at once frustrated, and he was condemned to drink an extra tumbler of punch as a penalty. After that he had but a confused idea of the rest of the evening. He knew that many songs were sung, and that everyone seemed talking together, and as at last he managed to get away and lie down on the straw he had a vague idea that the colonel was standing on a chair making a final oration, with the punch-bowl turned upside down and worn as a helmet.

G.o.dfrey had not touched the wine at dinner, knowing that he would be expected to take punch afterwards, and he had only sipped this occasionally, except the gla.s.s he had been condemned to drink; and when he heard the colonel shout in a stentorian voice "To arms!" he got up and shook himself, and felt ready for another day's work, although many of the others were sitting up yawning or abusing the colonel for having called them so early. However, it was already light. Two great samovars were steaming, and the cups set in readiness on the table. G.o.dfrey managed to get hold of a pail of water and indulged in a good wash, as after a few minutes did all the others; while a cup or two of tea and a few slices of fried bacon set up even those who were at first least inclined to rise.

A quarter of an hour later the sledges were at the door, and the party started. The hunt was even less successful than that of the previous day. No stag was seen, but some ten hares and five brace of grouse were shot. At three o'clock the party a.s.sembled again at the farm-house and had another hearty meal, terminating with one gla.s.s of punch round; then they took their places in their sledges and were driven back to the town; the party for St. Petersburg started by the six-o'clock train, the rest giving them a hearty cheer as the carriage moved off from the platform.

"Well, have you enjoyed it, G.o.dfrey?" Mr. Robson asked.

"Immensely, sir. It has been grand fun. The colonel is a wonderful fellow."

"There are no more pleasant companions than the Russians," Mr. Robson said. "They more closely resemble the Irish than any people I know. They have a wonderful fund of spirits, enjoy a practical joke, are fond of sport, and have too a sympathetic, and one may almost say a melancholy vein in their disposition, just as the Irish have. They have their faults, of course--all of us have; and the virtue of temperance has not as yet made much way here. Society, in fact, is a good deal like that in England two or three generations back, when it was considered no disgrace for a man to sit after dinner at the table until he had to be helped up to bed by the servants. Now, White, you have got the cards, I think."

G.o.dfrey watched the game for a short time, then his eyes closed, and he knew nothing more until Mr. Robson shook him and shouted, "Pull yourself together, G.o.dfrey. Here we are at St. Petersburg."

Three days later, when Ivan Petrovytch came in to breakfast at eleven o'clock--for the inmates of the house had a cup of coffee or chocolate and a roll in their rooms at half-past seven, and office work commenced an hour later--G.o.dfrey saw that he and his wife were both looking very grave. Nothing was said until the servant, having handed round the dishes, left the room.

"Has anything happened?" G.o.dfrey asked.

"Yes, there is bad news. Another plot against the life of the Czar has been discovered. The Nihilists have mined under the road by which he was yesterday evening to have travelled to the railway-station. It seems that some suspicion was felt by the police. I do not know how it arose; at any rate at the last moment the route was changed. During the night all the houses in the suspected neighbourhood were searched, and in the cellar of one of them a pa.s.sage was found leading under the road. A mine was heavily charged with powder, and was connected by wires to an electric battery; and there can be no doubt that had the Czar pa.s.sed by as intended he would have been destroyed by the explosion. It is terrible, terrible!"

"Did they find any one in the cellar?" G.o.dfrey asked.

"No one. The conspirators had no doubt taken the alarm when they heard that the route was changed, and the place was deserted. It seems that the shop above was taken four months ago as a store for the sale of coal and wood, and the cellar and an adjoining one were hired at the same time. There was also a room behind the shop, where the man and woman who kept it lived. They say that arrests have been made all over the city this morning, and we shall no doubt have a renewal of the wholesale trials that followed the a.s.sa.s.sination of General Mesentzeff, the head of the police, last autumn. It is terrible! These misguided men hope to conquer the empire by fear. Instead of that, they will in the end only strengthen the hands of despotism. I have always been inclined to liberalism, but I have wished for gradual changes only. For large changes we are not yet fit; but as education spreads and we approach the western standard, some power and voice ought to be given to all intelligent enough to use it; that is to say, to the educated cla.s.ses. I would not--no one in his senses would--give the power of voting to illiterate and ignorant men, who would simply be tools in the hands of the designing and ambitious; but the peoples of the great towns, St.

Petersburg, Moskow, Kieff, Odessa, and others should be permitted to send representatives--men of their own choice--to the provincial councils, which should be strengthened and given a real, instead of a nominal, voice in the control of affairs.

"That was all I and thousands like me ever wished for in the present, but it would have been the first step towards a const.i.tution which the empire, when the people become fit for it, might enjoy. That dream is over. These men, by their wild violence, have thrown back the reforms for half a century at least. They have driven the Czar to war against them; they have strengthened the hands of the men who will use their acts as an excuse for the extremest measures of repression; they have ranged on the other side all the moderate men like myself, who, though desirous of const.i.tutional changes, shrink with horror from a revolution heralded by deeds of bloodshed and murder."

"I quite agree with you," G.o.dfrey said warmly. "Men must be mad who could counsel such abominable plans. The French Revolution was terrible, although it began peacefully, and was at first supported by all the best spirits of France; but at last it became a hideous butchery. But here in Russia it seems to me that it would be infinitely worse, for it is only in the towns that there are men with any education; and if it began with the murder of the Czar, what would it grow to?"

"What, indeed!" Ivan Petrovytch repeated. "And yet, like the French Revolution, the pioneers of this movement were earnest and thoughtful men, with n.o.ble dreams for the regeneration of Russia."

"But how did it begin?"

"It may be said to have started about 1860. The emanc.i.p.ation of the serfs produced a sort of fever. Every one looked for change, but it was in the universities, the seminaries, and among the younger professional men that it first began. Prohibited works of all kinds, especially those of European socialists, were, in spite of every precaution at the frontier, introduced and widely circulated. Socialistic ideas made tremendous progress among the cla.s.s I speak of, and these, by writing, by the circulation of prohibited papers, and so on, carried on a sort of crusade against the government, and indeed against all governments, carrying their ideas of liberty to the most extreme point and waging war against religion as well as against society.

"In the latter respect they were more successful than in the former, and I regret to say that atheism made immense strides among the educated cla.s.s. They had some profound thinkers among them: Tchernyshevsky, Dobroluboff, Mikhailoff, besides Herzen and Ogareff, the two men who brought out the _Kolokol_ in London in the Russian language, and by their agents spread it broadcast over Russia. The stifling of the insurrection in Poland strengthened the reactionary party. More repressive edicts were issued, with the usual result, that secret societies multiplied everywhere. Then came the revolution and commune in Paris, which greatly strengthened the spread of revolutionary ideas here. Another circ.u.mstance gave a fresh impetus to this. Some time before, there had been a movement for what was called the emanc.i.p.ation of women, and a perfect furore arose among girls of all cla.s.ses for education.

"There were no upper schools or colleges open to them in Russia, and they went in enormous numbers to Switzerland, especially to Zurich.

Girls of the upper cla.s.ses shared their means with the poorer ones, and the latter eked out their resources by work of all descriptions. Zurich, as you know, is a hotbed of radicalism, and those young women who went to learn soon imbibed the wildest ideas. Then came a ukase, ordering the immediate return home of all Russian girls abroad. It was undoubtedly a great mistake. In Switzerland they were harmless, but when they returned to Russia and scattered over the towns and villages, they became so many apostles of socialism, and undoubtedly strengthened the movement. So it grew. Men of good families left their homes, and in the disguise of workmen expounded their principles among the lower cla.s.ses. Among these was Prince Peter Krapotkine, the rich Cossack Obuchoff, Scisoko and Rogaceff, both officers, and scores of others, who gave up everything and worked as workmen among workmen.

"Innumerable arrests were made, and at one trial a thousand prisoners were convicted. So wholesale were the arrests that even the most enthusiastic saw that they were simply sacrificing themselves in vain, and about 1877 they changed their tactics. The prisons were crowded, and the treatment there of the political prisoners was vastly harder than that given to those condemned for the most atrocious crimes, as you may imagine when I tell you that in the course of the trial of that one batch I spoke of, which lasted four years, seventy-five of the prisoners committed suicide, went mad, or died. Then when the authorities thought Nihilism was stamped out by wholesale severity the matter a.s.sumed another phase. The crusade by preaching had failed, and the Nihilists began a crusade of terror. First police spies were killed in many places, then more highly placed persons, officers of the police, judges, and officials who distinguished themselves by their activity and severity. Then in the spring of last year Vera Zasulitch shot at General Trepoff, who had ordered a political prisoner to be flogged. She was tried by a jury, and the feeling throughout the country was so much in favour of the people who had been so terribly persecuted that she was acquitted. The authorities were furious, and every effort was made to find and re-arrest Vera; and a verdict of the court acquitting many of the accused in one of the trials was annulled by the Czar.

"Well, you know, G.o.dfrey Bullen, I am not one who meddles with politics.

You have never heard me speak of them before, and I consider the aims of these men would bring about anarchy. An anarchy that would deluge the land with blood seems to me detestable and wicked. But I cannot but think the government has made a terrible mistake by its severity. These people are all enthusiastic fanatics. They see that things are not as they should be, and they would destroy everything to right them. Hate their aims as one may, one must admit that their conduct is heroic. Few have quailed in their trials. All preserve a calmness of demeanour that even their judges and executioners cannot but admire. They seem made of iron; they suffer everything, give up everything, dare everything for their faith; they die, as the Christian martyrs died in Rome, unflinching, unrepentant. If they have become as wild beasts, severity has made them so. Their propaganda was at first a peaceful one. It is cruelty that has driven them to use the only weapon at their disposal, a.s.sa.s.sination.

"One man, for example, in 1877, Jacob Stefanovic, organized a conspiracy in the district of Sighirino. It spread widely among the peasants. The priests, violating the secret of the confessional, informed the police, but these, although using every effort, could learn no more. Hundreds of arrests were made, but nothing discovered. Learning that the priests had betrayed them the peasants no longer went to confession, and to avoid betraying themselves in a state of drunkenness abstained from the use of brandy; but one man, tired and without food, took a gla.s.s. It made him drunk, and in his drunkenness he spoke to the man who had sold him spirits. He was arrested, and although he did not know all, gave enough clue for the police to follow up, and all the leaders and over a thousand persons were arrested. Two thousand others, who were affiliated to the society, were warned in time and escaped. You can guess the fate of those who were captured.

"Last year, three months before you came here, General Mezentsoff, the head of the police, was a.s.sa.s.sinated, and since then we know that it is open war between the Nihilists and the Czar. The police hush matters up, but they get abroad. Threatening letters reach the Czar in his inmost apartments, and it is known that several attempts have been made to a.s.sa.s.sinate him, but have failed.

"One of the most extraordinary things connected with the movement is that women play a large part in it. Being in the thick of every conspiracy they are the life and soul of the movement, and they are of all cla.s.ses. There are a score of women for whose arrest the authorities would pay any money, and yet they elude every effort. It is horrible.

This is what comes of women going to Switzerland and learning to look upon religion as a myth and all authority as hateful, and to have wild dreams of an impossible state of affairs such as never has existed in this world. It is horrible, but it is pitiable. The prisons in the land are full of victims; trains of prisoners set off monthly for Siberia. It is enough to turn the brain to think of such things. How it is to end no one can say."

But it was only in bated breath and within closed doors that the discovery of the Nihilist plot was discussed in St. Petersburg.

Elsewhere it was scarcely alluded to, although, if mentioned, those present vied with each other in the violence of their denunciation of it; but when society from the highest to the lowest was permeated by secret agents of the police, and every word was liable to be reported and misinterpreted, a subject so dangerous was shunned by common consent. It was known, though, that large numbers of arrests had been made, but even those whose dearest friends had suddenly disappeared said no word of it in public, for to be even a distant acquaintance of such a person was dangerous. Yet apparently everything went on as usual: the theatres were as well filled; the Nevski as crowded and gay.