The White Terror and The Red Part 34

It was half past two when the imperial carriage, surrounded by the six cossacks and followed by the gendarme officers and the chief of police, set out on their homebound journey. The handsome coachman let out his horses. The group was scudding along at top speed. The chief of police stood up in his sleigh, one of his gloved hands on the shoulder of his driver, as he strained his eyes now to the right now to the left, after the manner of the human figure on the face of a certain kind of clocks.

The carriage turned to the right, pa.s.sing a detachment of marines who saluted the Czar by presenting arms. The carriage was now on one of the banks of the Catharine Ca.n.a.l, an iron railing to the right, a row of buildings to the left. An employe of a horse-car company, who was levelling off a ridge of caked snow at this moment, hastily rested his crowbar against the iron railing and bared his head. Some distance in front of him a young man in a dark overcoat, and with a white package in his hand, was trudging along the ca.n.a.l side of the street. He was pa.s.sed and left in the rear by a man in the uniform of a hospital nurse of the guards. On the sidewalk to the left of the Czar, another man, also in military uniform, was moving rapidly along, while from the opposite direction, in the middle of the snow-covered street, came a boy pulling a little sled with a basket of meat on it. Sophia was looking on from the other side of the ca.n.a.l.

Colonel Dvorzhitzky (the chief of police) was scanning the sidewalk to the left, when a terrific crash went up from under the Czar's carriage.

It was as if a ma.s.s of deafening sound had lain dormant there, in the form of a vast closed fan, and the fan had suddenly flown open. The colonel's horses reared violently, hurling him over the shoulder of his coachman. While he was surveying the left side of the street, the employe of the tramway company and several military people, coming up alongside the railing, had seen the young man in the dark overcoat lift his white package and throw it under the Czar's carriage. The carriage came to a sudden halt amid a cloud of smoke and snow dust. A second or two pa.s.sed before any of them could realise what it all meant. The young man turned about and broke into a run.

"Catch him! Hold him!" the pedestrians shrieked frantically, das.h.i.+ng after the running man.

He had reached a point some thirty feet back of the imperial carriage when he was hemmed in. One of the cossacks and the boy lay in the snow shrieking. One of the rear corners of the carriage was badly shattered.

The rest of it was uninjured, but during the first minute or two its doors remained closed, so that the bystanders could not tell whether the Czar was hurt or not. Then the chief of police rushed up to the vehicle and flung the right door open. The Czar was unhurt, but ghastly pale. He sat bending slightly forward, his feet on the bearskin covering the floor, a gilt ash receiver on a shelf in front of him.

"The guilty man has been caught, your Imperial Majesty!" Colonel Dvorzhitzky burst out.

"Has he?" the Emperor asked, in intense agitation.

"He has, your Imperial Majesty. They are holding him. May I offer you to finish the journey in my sleigh?"

"Yes, but I first want to see the prisoner."

Pervaded by the conviction that another plot on his life had failed, the Czar stepped out of the carriage, and accompanied by a group of officers, some from his escort and others from among the pa.s.sers-by, he crossed over to the sidewalk that ran along the ca.n.a.l railing, erect and majestic as usual, but extremely pale with excitement, and then turning to the right he walked toward where a group of uniformed men were holding a fair-complexioned beardless young fellow against the railing.

People, mostly in military uniforms, came running from every direction.

Somebody asked: "How is the Emperor?"

"Thank G.o.d," answered the Czar, "I have escaped, but----" and he pointed at the wounded cossack and boy.

"It may be too soon to thank G.o.d," said the prisoner.

"Is this the man who did it?" the Czar asked, advancing toward him. "Who are you?"

"My name is Glazoff."

The Czar turned back. He had made a few steps, when a man who stood no more than three feet from him raised a white object high over his head and dashed it to the ground, between the Emperor and himself.

There was another explosion, still more violent and deafening than the first. The air was a turmoil of smoke, snow-dust and shreds of uniforms, concealing everything else from view. Sophia hurried away.

More than half a minute later, when the chaos had partly cleared away, the Czar was seen in a sitting posture on the snow-covered sidewalk, leaning against the railing, his large oval head bare, his cape-cloak gone. He was breathing hard. His face was in blood, the flesh of his bared legs lacerated, the blood gus.h.i.+ng from them over the snow. A heap of singed, smoking tatters nearby was all that had been left of his cloak.

With cries of horror and of overpowering pity the bystanders rushed forward. Among them was a man with a bomb under his coat like the two which had just exploded. He was one of the four men who had s.h.i.+fted their posts when they saw Sophia raising her handkerchief to her nose.

Had the second bomb failed to do its b.l.o.o.d.y work, this Terrorist would have thrown his missile when the imperial carriage came by his corner.

As he beheld the Czar on the ground and bleeding, however, he instinctively flung himself forward to offer help to the suffering man.

At sight of the prostrated Czar the men who held the author of the first explosion, began to shower blows on him.

"Don't," he begged them, s.h.i.+elding his head and face. "I meant the good of the people."

Two yards from the Czar lay bleeding the unconscious figure of a civilian. Further away were several other prostrated men, in all sorts of uniforms.

"Help!" the Czar uttered in a faint voice.

Somebody handed him a handkerchief, which he put to his face, muttering "Cold, cold." Several of the marines who had saluted him a few minutes ago and two guardsmen placed him on Colonel Dvorzhitzky's sleigh.

When Grand Duke Michal appeared on the scene he found his brother rapidly sinking.

"Sasha,[C] do you hear me?" he asked him, with tears in his eyes.

[C] Diminutive of Alexander.

The bystanders, who had never before heard their Czar addressed in the form of affectionate familiarity, were thrilled with a feeling of heart-tearing pity and of the most fervent devotion. Most of them had sobs in their throats.

"Yes," the Czar answered faintly.

"How do you feel, Sasha?"

"To the Palace--quick," the Czar whispered. And upon hearing somebody's suggestion that he be taken to the nearest house for immediate relief, he uttered:

"Bear me to the palace--there--die----."

He reclined between two cossacks, with a gendarme officer facing him and supporting his legs. This is the way he returned home. Pedestrians met him with gestures of horrified perplexity and acute commiseration now.

The crowd at one corner of Catharine Ca.n.a.l was a babel of excitement and violence. In their mad rush for the man who threw the second bomb, the bystanders were accusing each other, grabbing at each other, quarrelling, fighting. As Nihilists were for the most part people of education, every man who looked college-bred was in danger of his life.

Among those who were beaten to a pulp in this wild melee were two political spies who had the appearance of university students. A shout went up that the thrower of the fatal bomb had vaulted over the fence of the Michal gardens nearby, and then the mob broke down part of that fence, and ruined the gardens in a wild but vain search for the Terrorist. People were seized and hustled off to the station houses by the hundred.

The heir apparent, a fair-complexioned Hercules, was on his way to the Winter Palace surrounded by a strong escort of mounted men. It was the first time he had appeared in the streets so accompanied. The cl.u.s.ter of hors.e.m.e.n and sleighs that had left the palace three hours before never returned; this one was coming in its place; but the effect of grim detachment, of fierce challenge was the same.

An hour had elapsed. The flag over the Winter Palace which denotes Imperial presence was put at half-mast. Church bells were tolling the death of Alexander II. and the accession of Alexander III.

The new Czar was by his father's bedside. He was even more powerfully built than he, but he lacked his grace and the light of his intelligent eyes--a physical giant with a look of obtuse honesty on a fair, bearded round face. An English diplomatist who understood him well has said that "he had a mind not only commonplace, but incapable of receiving new ideas." When he saw his father breathe his last, he exclaimed: "This is what we have come to!"--a celebrated e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n which an archbishop uttered at the funeral of Peter the Great in 1725. This was his first utterance as Emperor of Russia. Its puerile lack of originality was characteristic of the man.

Princess Dolgoruki fainted, and she had no sooner been brought to than the packing of her trunks was ordered by the sons of her dead husband.

The palace was surrounded by a strong cordon of cossacks. Palace Square was thronged, the neighbouring streets were tremulous with subdued excitement. Some people were sincerely overcome with grief and horror; others were struggling to conceal their exultation. There were such as wept and cursed the Nihilists by way of displaying their own loyalty, and there were such as burst into tears from the sheer solemnity and nervousness of the moment. But the great predominating feeling that pervaded these crowds, eclipsing every other sentiment or thought, was curiosity. "What is going to happen next?"--this was the question that was uppermost in the minds of these people in their present fever of excitement. Had a republic been proclaimed with the Executive Committee of the Nihilists as a provisional government, they would have sworn their allegiance to the bomb-throwers as readily as they did, on the morrow, to the son of the a.s.sa.s.sinated Emperor. Had the Terrorists succeeded, the same bearded bishops who blessed and sounded the praises of the new Czar would have blessed and sounded the praises of those who had killed his father.

Pavel was in a suburb of the capital, when he first heard the melancholy tolling of the church bells.

"What's the matter?" he asked an elderly man who was walking with a sleigh-load of bricks, the reins in his hands.

"They say our little father, the Czar, has been killed," the other answered, making the sign of the cross with his free hand. "People say the Czarowitz is going to cut down the term of military service. Is it true, sir?"

"What is true?" Pavel asked. He was literally dazed with excitement.

"A son of mine is in the army, sir," the other explained reverently. "So I wonder if the new Czar will be easier on the soldiers, sir."

Pavel hailed the first hackman he came across. He was burning to know the details of the a.s.sa.s.sination and to tell Clara that the first man he accosted on the great news of the hour had shown indifference to the death of the monarch.