The White Terror and The Red Part 10

Two cheap lithographs, one of General Suvoroff and the other of the reigning monarch, occupied the centre of the best wall, in jarring disharmony with the refined and somewhat Bohemian character of the rest of the room. The two portraits had been put there recently, to bear witness to the political "reliability" of the house. The hostess presided over a pile of yellow aromatic tobacco, rolling cigarettes for her guests and smoking incessantly herself. An idiotic-looking man-servant and a peasant girl fresh from the country kept up a supply of tea, zwiebacks and preserves. Every time they appeared the hostess, whose seat commanded the door, would signal to the company. She did it rather perfunctorily, however, the revolutionary discussion proceeding undisturbed. The cultured, bookish Russian of the a.s.semblage was Greek to the two servants. They talked of the three executions.

Presently two other civilians were announced.

"At last!" the hostess said, getting up from her pile of tobacco in a flutter.

The two newcomers were both above medium height, of solid build and ruddy-faced; but here their similarity of appearance ceased. One of them looked the image of social refinement and elegance, while the clothes and general aspect of the other bespoke a citified, prosperous peasant.

His rough top-boots, the red woolen belt round his coat and the rather coa.r.s.e tint of his florid complexion, like his full Russian beard, proclaimed the son of the unenlightened cla.s.ses. He was taller than his companion and remarkably well-built, with a shock of dark brown hair thrown back from a high prominent forehead and regular features. He was introduced to the gathering as Zachar. He and the stylish-looking man by his side whose revolutionary nickname was "My Lord," conveyed the effect of a bright, shrewd tradesman and a high-cla.s.s lawyer bent on some legal business.

"If we are late, blame this guide of mine, not me," Zachar said to the hostess, in a deep, rather harsh baritone, pointing at his companion.

"It turned out that he did not know the place very well himself. There is a pilot for you." He accepted a gla.s.s of tea in a silver holder and during the ensuing small talk the room rang with his merriment. His jests were commonplace, but his Russian and all he said betrayed the man of education. The tradesman's costume was his disguise, and if it became him so well it was because his parents were moujiks. Born in serfdom but brought up as a n.o.bleman at the expense of his former master, this university-bred peasant--a case of extreme rarity--for whom the gendarmes were searching in connection with a bold attempt to blow up an imperial train, loomed in the minds of the revolutionists as the most conspicuous figure of their movement.

"And how is my young philosopher?" he said to Pavel. "I was at your place this morning, but found you out, Pasha."

"I'll see you later on," Pavel said dryly. "Philosopher" referred to the nature of the studies which Pavel's mother thought him to be pursuing.

There was a touch of patronage in the way Zachar used the word, and Pavel resented it.

As the gathering began to lapse into a graver mood the conversation was expectantly left to Zachar, who by degrees accepted the role of the princ.i.p.al speaker of the evening. That he relished this role and was fond of a well turned phrase became apparent at once, but the impression soon wore off. He compelled attention.

"The practice of nations being inherited like furniture or chickens has been out of date for centuries," he said in the course of a ferocious attack on the existing adjustment of things. "But our party does not demand full justice at once. The Will of the People is not inconsiderate. We are willing to project ourselves into the position of an old chap with whom the love of power has been bred in the bone. All our party does demand, as a first step, is some regard for the rights of the individual; of those rights without which the word civilisation is of a piece with that puerile sort of hypocrisy as our late war with Turkey, when the ambitious old fellow in his unquenchable thirst for territory sent his subjects to die for the liberty of Bulgarians so that their own children at home might be plunged into more abject slavery than ever.

"The government knows, of course, that its days are numbered and that it is only cowardice and incapacity for concerted action which make its brief respite possible. To retreat honourably, before it is too late, to yield to the stern voice of the revolution under some specious pretext--this is the step indicated by the political situation, but then this is not what the ambitious oldster is after. Is there any wonder he has lost his head? So much the better for the revolution. One or two decisive blows and the government will topple over. Thanks to the splendid army section of the Will of the People, on the one hand, and to our powerful Workingmen's Section, on the other, one hundred resolute men will be enough to seize the Winter Palace, to cut off all egress, arrest the new Czar and, amid the general confusion following the death of the old tyrant, proclaim a provisional government. What a glorious opportunity to serve one's country!"

His speech lasted an hour and a half. Most of his hearers were recent converts, and these the matter-of-fact tone of his utterances took by storm. The Third Section had heard of him as an irresistible agitator.

So he was, and the chief secret of his success lay--despite an effect of conscious floridity and bravado--in a sincere depth of conviction manifested by a volcanic vehemence of delivery. His speeches took it for granted that Russia was at the threshold of a great historical change and that his organisation was going to play a leading part in that change. He gathered particular a.s.surance from the fact that the "army section" that had been formed by his efforts included several officers of the court guard whose number he hoped to increase. These court officers it was whom his imagination pictured as "cutting off all egress" at the Winter Palace. The funds of his party included contributions from some high sources. Things seemed to be coming the "Will of the People's" way. As he spoke his strong physique seemed to be aflame with contagious pa.s.sion, sweeping along audience and speaker. The harshness of his mighty baritone was gone; his peasant face was beautiful. Words like "party," "citizen," "National a.s.sembly," are winged with the glamour of forbidden fruit in Russia, and when Zachar uttered these words, in accents implying that these things were as good as realised, his audience was enravished. To all of which, in the present instance, should be added the psychological effect of a group of das.h.i.+ng army officers, all members of the n.o.bility, reverently listening to an address by a peasant. He struck one as a giant of energy and courage, of nervous vitality as well as of bodily strength. He had the stuff of a political leader in him. Under favourable conditions he would have left his mark as one of the strong men of the nineteenth century.

He carried people along current-fas.h.i.+on rather than magnetised them.

Pavel was the next speaker, but the outraged sense of justice which was the keynote of his impa.s.sioned plea, coming as it did upon the heels of Zachar's peremptory and matter-of-course declarations, sounded out of date.

"Oh, it takes an idiot to talk after you, Zachar," he said, breaking off in the middle of a sentence. "One feels like being up and doing things, not talking. I wonder why we don't start for the Winter Palace, at once."

"That's the way I feel, too," chimed in a very young cavalry officer, while two older men in brilliant uniforms, were grasping Zachar each by one hand. The long-necked hostess was brus.h.i.+ng the tears from her eyes and calling herself "fool," for joy.

An artillery officer with bad teeth of whom Pavel could not think without thinking of the rheumatism of which that revolutionist had once complained to him, drew his sword fiercely, the polished steel flaming in the bright light of the room, as he said:

"By Jove!"

"Look at him! Look at him!" Zachar shouted.

"Bridle your pa.s.sions, old boy," Pavel put in.

A minute or two later he called the orator into the next room and handed him what looked like a package of tobacco.

Zachar was in high feather over the success of his speech and loath to leave the atmosphere of adoration that surrounded him here; but an important engagement forced him to take his departure.

A quarter of an hour's ride in a tramcar and a short walk through the moonlit streets brought him to a deserted corner in the vicinity of the Winter Palace, where he was met by a man dressed like an artisan, as tall as himself, but slimmer of girth, and the two went on trudging along the snow-encrusted sidewalk together. The other man had an expressive sickly face which the pallid glare of the moonlight gave a ghastly look.

"How is your health?" Zachar asked.

"Bad," the sickly looking man answered, holding out his hand into which Zachar put the package of tobacco, saying:

"See if it isn't too heavy for a quarter of a pound."

"It is, rather, but it'll pa.s.s," the other replied, weighing the package in his hand and then putting it into his pocket. Buried in the tobacco was a small quant.i.ty of dynamite.

"It's too bad you are not feeling well."

"Yes, my nerves are playing the devil with me. The worst of it is that I have got to keep the stuff under my pillow when I sleep. That gives me headaches."

"I shouldn't wonder. The evaporations of that stuff do that as a rule.

But can't you find another place for it?"

"Not for the night. They might go through my trunk then. They are apt to come in at any time. Oh, those surprise visits of theirs keep my wretched nerves on edge all the time."

While the gendarmerie and the police knew him to be a leader among the revolutionary workmen of the capital and were hunting for him all over the city, this man, whose name was Stepan Khaltourin, had for the past few months been making his home, under the name of Batushkoff, in the same building as the Czar, in the Winter Palace, where his work as a varnisher was highly valued. He was a self-taught mechanic, unusually well-read and clear-headed. Of retiring disposition and a man of few words, with an iron will under a bashful and extremely gentle manner, he was one of the prominent figures of the Will of the People, having been driven to terrorism by the senseless persecutions which he had met at the hands of the authorities in his attempts to educate some of his fellow-workmen. He now lodged, together with other mechanics, in the bas.e.m.e.nt of the Winter Palace, with only one room--the guard-room--between the ceiling over his head and the floor of the Imperial dining hall. Indeed, the frequent raids which a colonel at the head of a group of gendarmes had been making upon that bas.e.m.e.nt since the seizure of "Alexandre's" diagram were largely a matter of display and red tape. There was more jingling of spurs and flaunting of formidable looking moustaches than actual searching or watching. Nowhere was the incapacity of Russian officialdom ill.u.s.trated more glaringly than it was in the very home of the Czar. The bold Terrorist for whom the police were looking high and low had found little difficulty in securing employment here, and one of the first things that had attracted his attention in the place was the prevailing state of anarchy and demoralisation he found in it. Priceless gems and relics were scattered about utterly unguarded; stealing was the common practice of the court servants, and orgies at which these regaled their friends from the outside world upon wines from the imperial cellars were a nightly occurrence. Since Alexandre's arrest the vigilance of the court gendarmes had been greatly increased, so that no servant could enter the palace without being searched; yet Khaltourin contrived to smuggle in a small piece of dynamite every evening, thus gradually acc.u.mulating the supply that was needed for the terrible work of destruction he was preparing.

As to his position within the palace, he played his role so well that he was the favourite of gendarmes and servants alike, often hearing from them stories of the Nihilists and of the great plot to blow up the dining hall that was supposed to have been nipped in the bud.

"Well, how is that old gendarme of yours?" Zachar inquired. "Still teaching you manners?"

"Yes," Khaltourin answered with a smile. "I am getting sick of his attentions, though. But there is something back of them, it appears.

What do you think he's after? Why, he has a marriageable daughter, so he has taken it into his head to make a son-in-law of me."

"Ho-ho-ho-ho!" Zachar exploded, restraining a guffaw.

CHAPTER X.

THE CZAR'S ESCAPE.

On Tuesday, February 17th, at about six o'clock in the evening, Pavel and Makar were sauntering through the streets of the Va.s.sili Island.

Their conversation languished. While indoors they had had another discussion of Makar's scheme, a heart-to-heart talk in which Pavel showed signs of yielding; and now that they were out in the snow-dappled night they were experiencing that feeling of embarra.s.sment which is the aftermath of sentimental communion between two men. When they reached the Neva, Pavel cast a glance across, in the direction of the Winter Palace. The frozen river looked infinitely wider than it was. Dotted with lamps and crossed by streams of home-bound humanity, it lay vast, gorgeous, uncanny--a white plain animated with mysterious brightness and mysterious motion. The main part of the capital, on the Palace side of the Neva, was a world of gloom starred with myriads and myriads of lights, each so distinct that one almost felt tempted to count them; all this seemingly as far away as the gold-dotted sky overhead. Makar was huddling himself in his grey military cloak, his bare hands loosely thrust into its sleeves, looking at nothing. Pavel, his furred coat unb.u.t.toned, gazed across the Neva.

"Come on," the medical student urged, knocking one foot against the other. "It's too cold to be tramping around like this."

"One moment," Pavel responded, impatiently. He had been visiting this point at the same hour every day for the past week or two. Makar, who did not know of it, relapsed into his revery.

Suddenly there came a dull rolling crash. It burst from the other side, and as Pavel and Makar looked across the river they saw that the lights of the Winter Palace which had been burning a minute ago, were out, leaving a great patch of darkness. The human stream paused. Then came a rush of feet on all sides.

"It's in the Palace," Boulatoff whispered; and seizing his companion's hand at his side he pressed it with furious strength.

The next day the newspapers were allowed to state that the previous evening, as the Czar and a royal guest were about to enter the dining hall through one door and the other members of the imperial family through another, a terrific explosion had occurred, making a hole in the floor ten feet long and six wide; that eleven inmates of the guard room, which was directly under the dining hall, were killed and fifty-seven injured, the Czar's narrow escape having been due to an accidental delay of the dinner. The explosion had shattered a number of windows and blown out the gas, leaving the palace in complete darkness. Traces of an improvised dynamite mine had been discovered in the bas.e.m.e.nt. Three artisans employed in the palace were arrested, but their innocence was established, while a fourth man, a varnisher named Batushkoff, had disappeared. Now that Batushkoff was gone the Third Section learned that he was no other than Stepan Khaltourin, one of the active revolutionists its agents were looking for.