The White Terror and The Red: A Novel of Revolutionary Russia Page 13

  CHAPTER XII.

  A BEWILDERING ENCOUNTER.

  When Pavel was in St. Petersburg Anna Nicolayevna had missed him onlyoccasionally. Now that he was with her his absences were a continuoustorture to her. On the present occasion she sought diversion in a visitto Princess Chertogoff where she expected to hear something about themysterious prisoner. Princess Chertogoff was a lame, impoverishednoblewoman whose daughter was married to the assistant-procureur. Inhigher circles she was looked down upon as a social outcast, so thatAnna Nicolayevna's visits to her had a surreptitious character andsomething of the charm of forbidden fruit. Pavel's mother was fond ofthe stir her appearance produced in houses of this kind. The curiouspart of it was that the impecunious princess was one of the very fewpersons in the world whose presence irritated her. It seemed as thoughthis irritation had a peculiar attraction for her.

  It was an early hour in the afternoon. She was received in the vestibuleby Helene, the assistant-procureur's wife, with an outburst of kissesand caresses which had something to do with the young woman's expectingto become a mother. Rising in the background was the hostess, LydiaGrigorievna Chertogova (Chertogoff) and her gorgeous crutches. She waslarge, dark, and in spite of her made-over gowns, imposingly handsome.Aware of the fantastic majesty which these crutches gave her stalwartform, she paraded her defect as she did her beautiful dark eyes. At thismoment it seemed as though the high-polished ebony crutches joined herin beaming at the sight of the distinguished visitor. Helene, a smallwoman of twenty-four, usually compact as a billiard ball, was beginningto resemble an over-ripe apple.

  When the three women found themselves in the drawing room LydiaGrigorievna lost no time in turning the conversation on the arrestedNihilist. Her son-in-law had carefully abstained from opening his mouthon the subject, yet she talked about it authoritatively, with animplication of reserved knowledge of still graver import, but Helenegave her away.

  "Woldemar would not speak about it," she complained, reverently. "'Anaffair of state,' he said. You can't get a single word out of him." Sheexulted in the part he was playing as an exterminator of the enemies ofthe Czar, and in the air-castles she was building as to the promotion towhich the present case was to pave his way.

  "But what do they want, those scamps?" Lydia Grigorievna resumed, insoft, pampered accents. "Would they have us live without a Czar? Ishould have them cut to pieces, the rogues. Is it possible that thegovernment should be powerless to get rid of them? To think of a handfulof striplings keeping cabinet ministers in a perpetual state of terror."

  "Oh, nobody is really afraid of them," Helene retorted, holding her faceto the breeze which came in through an open window.

  "But your husband is not yet a cabinet minister, dear," her mother saidwith a smile toward the countess.

  "Oh, you're always suspecting me of something or other, _mamman_. I wasnot thinking of Woldemar at all."

  The charm of her presence, the appealing charm of a pretty young womanabout to become a mother, added itself to the tenderness and mystery ofspring. Lydia Grigorievna addressed another smile to the countess, butAnna Nicolayevna dropped her glance. The princess went on raging at therevolutionists. In reality, however, that handful of striplings who"kept cabinet ministers in a perpetual state of terror" had stirred up acuriosity in her that sprang from anything but indignation or contempt.She was hankering for a specimen of their literature, of thosepublications the very handling of which was apt to bring death. Herthirst in this direction was all the keener because she felt sure thatsome of the Nihilist papers that had been confiscated at the arrest ofthe unknown man were upstairs in her son-in-law's desk.

  "A constitution may be all very well in Germany or France," she said."This is Russia, not Germany or France or England, thank God. Yet thosewretches will go around stirring up discontent. On my way home fromMoscow last winter I heard a passenger say that if we had less briberyand more liberty and popular education we would be as good as any nationin Western Europe. I knew at once he was a Nihilist. You can tell one bythe first word he utters. I confess I was afraid to sit near him. He hadgrey side-whiskers, but maybe they were just stuck on. Oh, I should showthem no mercy."

  She was all flushed and ill at ease. She received no encouragement. Hersugared enunciation and the false ring of what she said grated on herhearer's nerves. Anna Nicolayevna listened in silence. The lame princesswas a sincere woman coated with a layer of insincerity. But thecountess thought her the embodiment of affectation and hated her,bizarre beauty, enunciation, altered gowns, crutches and all.

  Lydia Grigorievna was interrupted by the appearance of theassistant-procureur himself. He was tall and frail with a long straightstraw-coloured mane and pontifical gestures. His figure made one thinkof length in the abstract. As you looked at him he seemed to becontinually growing in height. Helene had fallen in love with himbecause he resembled the baron in a play she had seen in Moscow.

  "I've just looked in to bid you good afternoon, countess," he said. "Isaw your carriage through the window. But unfortunately--_businessbefore pleasure_." It was one of two or three English phrases which hekept for occasions of this character and which he mispronounced withgreat self-confidence.

  When Anna Nicolayevna got into the street she felt as though she hademerged from the suffocating atmosphere of some criminal den. In the Maybreeze, however, and at sight of the river her spirits rose. Shedismissed her carriage. When she reached the macadamised bank and caughtthe smell of the water it was borne in upon her afresh that it wasspring. She had passed this very spot, in a sleigh only a short whileago, it seemed. Lawns and trees had been covered with snow then; all hadbeen stiff with the stiffness of death; whereas now all was tenderlyalive with verdure and bloom, and wild-flowers smiled upon her at everyturn. Here it struck her as though spring had just been born; born infull attire overnight. Flushed and radiant, with her rusty chin in theair and her flat chest slightly thrown out, spinning her parasol, shewas briskly marching along, a broad streak of water to the right of her,a row of orchards to the left. The river beamed. From somewhereunderneath she heard the clanking of chains of lumber-horses,accompanied by the yell of boys. The greased wooden screws of a recedingcable-ferry were squirming in the air like two erect snakes of silver;the brass buttons of a soldier-passenger burned like a column of flames.All this and the lilac-laden breeze and Anna Nicolayevna's soul werepart of something vast, swelling with light and joy. But the breath ofspring is not all joy. Nature's season of love is a season of yearning.One feels like frisking and weeping at once. Spring was with us a yearago, but the interval seems many years. It is like revisiting one's homeafter a long absence: the scenes of childhood are a source of delightand depression at once. It is like hearing a long forgotten song: themelody, however gay, has a dismal note in it. Anna Nicolayevna had notbeen out many minutes when she began to feel encompassed by an immensemelancholy to which her heart readily responded. There was a vaguelonging in the clear blue sky, in the gleaming water, in the patches ofgrass on either side of the public promenade, in the distant outlinesacross the river, but above all in the overpowering freshness of theafternoon air. The travail of an unhappy soul seemed to be somewherenearby. A look of loneliness came into her eyes. She was burning to seePavel, to lay bare her soul to him.

  When a passing artisan in top-boots and with glass buttons in hiswaistcoat reverently took off his flat cap she returned the salute withmotherly fervour and slackened her pace to a more dignified gait. "I'mrespected and loved by the people," she mentally boasted to Pavel.

  Arrived at the bridge, she paused to hand a twenty-copeck piece to ablind beggar who sat on the ground by the tollman's booth. He apparentlyrecognised her by the way her gloved hand put the coin in his hand. Shehad given him alms as long as she could remember, and usually he made nomore impression on her than the lamp-posts she passed. This time,however, it came back to her how her mother used to send her out oftheir carriage with some money for him. She paused to look at him and tolisten to his song. She
recalled him as a man of thirty or forty withthick flaxen hair. Now he was gray and bald. "Great heavens! how timedoes fly!" she exclaimed in her heart, feeling herself an old woman. Theblind man seemed to be absorbed in his song. All blind beggars lookalike and they all seem to be singing the same doleful religious tune,yet this man, as he sat with his eyes sealed and his head leaned againstthe parapet, gave her a novel sensation. He was listening to his owntones, as if they came from an invisible world, like his own, but onelocated somewhere far away.

  Anna Nicolayevna gave him a ruble and passed on. Followed by thebeggar's benedictions, she made to turn into the street which formed thecontinuation of the bridge, when an approaching flour truck brought herto a halt. Besides several sacks of meal the waggon carried a cheap oldtrunk, and seated between the trunk and the driver was--Pavel; Paveluncouthly dressed in the garb of an artisan. His rudimentary beard wascovered with dust; his legs, encased in coarse grimy topboots, weredangling in the air. The visor of his flat cap was pushed down over hiseyes, screening them from the red afternoon sun which sparkled andglowed in the glass buttons of his vest. It certainly was Pavel. AnnaNicolayevna was panic-stricken. She dared not utter his name.

  The toll paid, the truck moved on. The countess followed her son withher eyes, until a cab shut him out of view, and then she remainedstanding for some time, staring at the cab. "What does it all mean?" sheasked herself with sickening curiosity. Finally her eye went to thewater below. She gazed at its rippling stretches of black and masses ofshattered silver; at a woman slapping a heap of wash with a wash-beater,at a long raft slowly gliding toward the bridge. "Is he disguised? Whatdoes it all mean? Was it really Pasha?"

  Doubt dawned in her mind. In her eagerness to take another look at theman on the truck she raised her eyes. After waiting for some moments shesaw the waggon with the two men as it appeared and forthwith disappearedat the other end of the bridge. The thought of the arrested man stunnedher. Was Pavel a Nihilist? The image of her son had assumed a new, aforbidding expression.

  The revolutionists moved about on the verge of martyrdom, and as themere acquaintance with one of their number meant destruction, theimagination painted them as something akin to living shadows, as beingswhose very touch brought silence and darkness. People dared not utterthe word "Nihilist" or "revolutionist" aloud. Anna Nicolayevna belongedto the privileged few, but at this moment she dreaded so much as tothink of her son by these ghastly names. It now appeared to AnnaNicolayevna that all through her call at Lydia Grigorievna's she had hada presentiment of an approaching calamity. She took the first cab thatcame along.

  "As fast as you can drive," she said.

  The moment Anna Nicolayevna got home she inquired whether Pavel was inhis room, and when the porter said that his Highness had not been backsince he had left, in the morning, a fresh gust of terror smote herheart and brain. She stole into his room. On the table lay a Germanpamphlet on Kant and a fresh number of the _Russian Messenger_, theultra-conservative magazine published in Moscow. In several places theleaves were cut. A Nihilist was the last person in the world one wouldexpect to read this organ of Panslavists. What Anna Nicolayevna did notknow was that the cut pages of the conservative magazine, which Pavelhad received from St. Petersburg the day before, contained a hiddenrevolutionary message. Here and there a phrase, word, or a singleletter, was marked, by means of an inkstain, abrasion or what lookedlike the idle penciling of a reader, these forming half a dozenconsecutive sentences.

  Anna Nicolayevna was perplexed and her perplexity gave her a new thrillof hope. She was in a quiver of impatience to see her son and have itall out.

  The dinner hour came round and Pavel was not there. She could not eat.Every little while she paused to listen for a ring of the door bell. Shesent a servant to his room to see if he had not arrived unheard. He hadnot.

  The other people at table were Kostia, in huge red shoulder-straps whichmade his well-fitting uniform look too large for him; Kostia's oldtutor, a powerful looking German with a bashful florid face, and thecountess' own old governess, an aged Frenchwoman with a congealed smileon her bloodless lips. This restlessness of the countess when Pavel wasslow in coming was no news to them, but this time she seemed to feelparticularly uneasy. Silence hung over them. The Frenchwoman's dried-upsmile turned to a gleam of compassion. The German ate timidly. Thisman's services had practically ceased when Kostia entered the cadetcorps, but Anna Nicolayevna retained him in the house for his quietpiety. She had a feeling that so far as the intelligent classes wereconcerned the simple forms of Protestantism were more compatible withreligious sincerity than were the iron-bound formalities of her nativechurch. So, with her heart thirsting for spiritual interest, she foundintense pleasure in her theological conversations with this well-read,narrow-minded, honest Lutheran, whose religious convictions she envied.