While their comrade was undergoing the various vicissitudes, into
which his overanxious zeal had led him, the members of the Socialist
brotherhood in Vienna had been going through a very bitter time of
anxiety and dread for the future.
A week had now elapsed since Iván Volenski should have, according to
his own statement, left Vienna for Petersburg with the papers
entrusted to him, and up to this day no message had come from him.
He had promised to give them some definite news of himself as soon as
he had reached Petersburg. If all had been well he should have been
there three days ago, and must by now have given the papers over to
Taranïew. Why then did he not wire, or give some account of himself,
to reassure them at least that he and the fateful papers were safe?
The night before they had met in their committee-room in the
Franzgasse, and it had been a gloomy and agitated meeting. The
conviction had first begun to take root in their minds that the usual
fate had overtaken their daring messenger, and that after this any
day, at any hour, the crushing blow might fall upon them all.
Once their papers in the hands of the Third Section, probably not one
of them could hope to escape. And what was more galling, more bitter
even than the fear of death, was the fact that their plot, so
magnificently planned, so daringly carried out, would end but in their
own perdition, with nothing gained save a gang of convicts tramping to
Siberia.
Unless----
Yes! there was an “unless,” a grim and great alternative that, in
spite of the president’s almost entreating speeches, in spite of the
better, more refined nature in most of them, had gradually but surely
forced itself upon their minds. Mirkovitch had put it to them five
days ago, when flushed with their triumph they thought of nothing but
the great ends they could gain by their success. Now that this success
seemed like bubbles, to be bursting before their eyes, they thought
once more of their old comrade’s grim words, and began longing for
revenge.
The president had asked them to meet again to-night, and towards ten
o’clock they dropped in, one by one, anxious for news, full of
eagerness.
“Has anything been heard?” were the first words uttered by each as
they entered, and, on hearing the gloomy negative, pipes were brought
out and smoked in sullen silence.
The president had arrived, urbane, temperate, as usual, but even on
his face there sat a look of deep apprehension, which he evidently
strove to hide from his younger comrades. Every now and then he
glanced anxiously towards the door, where Mirkovitch’s footsteps would
probably soon be heard.
The latter had not yet arrived; yesterday he had seemed more grim,
more sullen than ever. Unlike the other members of the brotherhood,
his thoughts seemed in no way to dwell very anxiously on Iván and his
probable fate; they seemed to tend with ever-growing satisfaction
towards the terrible goal, the attainment of which he hoped to reach
shortly. He had not yet put into words these thoughts that he knew
already loomed darkly in the minds of all, and which completely
overmastered him; but he meant to obtain their consent to-night, and
felt, as he entered the room and noted the attitudes of them all, that
his would be an easy victory. He had taken good care to sow his seeds
in good time; to-night he meant to reap the harvest.
Maria Stefanowna was with him. They all trusted her with the secrets
of the fraternity now. The part she had so successfully, so discreetly
played at the opera ball had shown them that a woman such as she was
is often a valuable adjunct in the affairs of men.
The girl came in with her father, and having greeted those she knew
best among the committee, she also lighted a short cigarette and
waited to hear what they all had to say.
“Mirkovitch, have you heard from Volenski?” asked a dozen eager
voices.
“No,” he replied; “I thought the president or some of the committee
would have had some message from him by now.”
There was a silence; then a sullen voice said--
“Swietlitzki declares that the Papal Nuncio did not go to Petersburg
at all, but that he has been staying in the Tyrol for the last week.”
“But Iván said that he was starting with him on the following day,
Ash-Wednesday.”
“Surely----”
“No!” interrupted the president, “no fear of that.”
“Do you mean that he may have fallen into the clutches of the police?”
“That is impossible,” said the president reassuringly, “for we should
not all be sitting here peaceably. By now every one of us incriminated
in those fateful papers--and most of us are so, I imagine--would have
been arrested. The very fact that we are still, all of us, free men
proves that our papers are safe.”
“Our papers might be,” rejoined one of the brethren, “but what about
our messenger?”
“He might, before being arrested, have succeeded in destroying the
papers, you mean,” said another.
“I feel sure,” asserted one of the older men, “that Iván would sooner
part with his life than with our secret.”
There was once more silence in the room. Mirkovitch’s grim eyes
travelled mockingly, perhaps even contemptuously, on those assembled
round him. Maria Stefanowna took no part at all in the expression of
these various surmises and conjectures. She sat listening attentively
to all that was said around her, but her eyes, ever and anon, were
attached with a curiously anxious and restless look on her father, who
sat opposite to her.
“Does it not strike you, my friends,” said Mirkovitch at last,
sarcastically, “that it is impossible for us, some eight hundred
leagues away, to arrive at any definite conclusion as to what has or
has not happened to Volenski?”
That was so, it seemed such a hard and dry fact, and yet there was
some slight satisfaction, even in these vague conjectures, shared with
one’s neighbour, in hearing what the other comrades’ thoughts and
fears were, and every now and then in provoking a reassuring remark
from their calm president.
“For my part,” added Mirkovitch, “I think Volenski’s silence is
exceedingly ominous. There could have been no possible danger in his
sending a wire to the president--who is known to be a great friend of
his--apprising him of his arrival in Petersburg. If he had
accomplished the journey safely you may be quite sure your chairman
would have received such a message.”
The president looked up anxiously at his comrade and stretched out his
hand towards him, as if he would check him from proceeding with what
he was going to say.
“Speak, Mirkovitch, you have something on your mind,” said one of the
committee, and “Let us hear!” came from all corners of the room.
Maria Stefanowna, like the president, made a movement as if she would
have wished to stop her father, but, perhaps realising the futility of
such an attempt, she resumed her cigarette and her anxious, expectant
attitude.
“What I have to say will, I know, not seem pleasant to some of you,”
said Mirkovitch, who had now risen and looked down on his assembled
brethren from his towering height with that contemptuous smile
peculiar to himself. “You see, most of you have had the misfortune of
having been born gentlemen. I have not, and, therefore, none of those
feelings you call refined have place in my burly, low-born mind. My
friends, though you may be gentlemen, you must not be weak and effete
like those of your class. For God’s sake, look the facts straight in
the face, and try to forget yourselves and your own petty feelings for
the good of our country and our people which we serve. You would not
listen to me before, against my counsel you used our mighty, our
successful plan for the paltry purpose of getting our comrades out of
prison. I tell you,” he asserted, bringing his powerful fist down on
the table, “that they are all willing over there to die for the good
cause. They are not, as we are, fond of life and liberty; they love
the cause first, themselves not at all. Why should we care what has
happened to Volenski? What is one man against the weal of millions?”
He looked inspired now, a prophet of the Utopia that dwelt in all
their hearts, the Utopia at which some of them would have arrived by
the most gentle of means, but which this man would conquer by fire and
sword.
They all knew what they would hear next; they knew what Mirkovitch had
all through wished them to do. Most of them would willingly have
stopped their ears not to hear the dreaded manifesto that this
powerful man would in the next moment hurl at them.
“We have often had speeches here,” resumed Mirkovitch once more, “to
inflame our enthusiasm against the tyrants that hold our destinies and
those of our fellow-men in the palm of their hands. I am no orator;
the speeches did not come from me. Some of you, who to-night seem
weakest, spoke the loudest then. But I tell you, we have a great
weapon in our hands against them, the one weapon that must, sooner or
later, lay them prostrate at our feet, asking for the mercy they have
never granted us.
“That weapon is _fear_. Let us strike terror in their hearts, my
friends; they have no other vulnerable points. When we can, let us
strike in the dark, at all times swiftly and surely, so that in days
to come, very soon, they will look at each other with blanched faces
and trembling lips, and murmur what they dare not say out loud, ‘My
turn next perhaps.’ It is then, and then only, that we shall be the
masters, when cowardly fear will place them grovelling at our feet.
Then we can dictate, then we can negotiate, and before then what
matter Dunajewski or Volenski, or a hundred such? What are their lives
that we should hesitate for a moment to wield the weapon our own
efforts have placed in our hands?”
He sat down once more, and a dead silence followed this speech.
Enthusiasm was once more kindling in the gloomy faces around, once
more the man with the iron will had imposed it on his weaker comrades,
and when his mocking eyes again travelled round the room he could read
on the faces before him the result of his powerful words; he could
read it in the gradual disappearance of the anxious looks, the
unspoken terrors; could read it in the young, dreamy eyes, now once
more burning with the glow of enthusiasm, the thirst for valiant
deeds, at peril of life and freedom.
“Mirkovitch is right,” was heard on all sides.
Perhaps some of them still shuddered when they realised what his being
right meant to the helpless prisoner in the Heumarkt, but they were
very few now, and when the president’s anxious eyes and Mirkovitch’s
triumphant ones scanned all the faces there, they knew that if the
grim Socialist’s wish was put to the vote there would be many “ayes”
and very few “noes.”
“After all, my friends,” resumed the stalwart Russian, now laying his
trump card on the table, “I am sure, if you were asked, you, none of
you, would wish to see our great plot come ignominiously to grief
through the liberation of our prisoner by the Russian police, and all
of us convicted without having attained anything, after having dared
so much. Any hour, any minute now, may see us all in the clutches of
the Third Section, while Nicholas Alexandrovitch leaves my house free
and unscathed. Every second heightens our peril and diminishes the
chances of our triumph. At least if we fall, for there seems no
likelihood of our being able to escape undetected, let us have
accomplished something that will leave our names for ever glorified in
the eyes of every patriot in Russia.”
Thus was the doom of the prisoner sealed; very little discussion
followed. Unwillingly, but still unanimously, they had given their
consent to the dastardly deed which Mirkovitch but too willingly
offered to do for them. One or two of them asked for a
respite--twenty-four hours--during which, after all, some news of
Volenski might yet arrive. The old Socialist, satisfied at having
carried his point, willingly agreed to wait till the morrow, and a
final meeting therefore was convened for the next day, at the same
hour. The president had said nothing. What was his influence against
that of his grim comrade? The tide of feeling, a mixture of mistaken
duty and misguided enthusiasm, had sealed the fate of the young
Tsarevitch.
The weight of indecision seemed to have been lifted from the minds of
them all. Although they neither smoked nor chatted, according to their
wont, the gloom had quite given place to irrevocable determination. No
more questions or surmises were put forward as to Volenski’s probable
fate or their own certain doom. The word “assassination” had sounded
once, pronounced by many lips with a shudder. It was now called
“execution”; Mirkovitch, the willing executioner; they, the judges who
had arrested and condemned a prisoner just as their tyrants did with
the millions over which they held sway.
Half an hour later they were all preparing to depart, sober and
silent, with thoughts of the great morrow. No one had taken much
notice of Maria Stefanowna, whose large dark eyes had been fixed on
her father, as if he held her in a trance. When most of them had gone
she also slipped out of the room, not waiting to see if Mirkovitch was
accompanying her, as she brushed past him. Out in the street she
hailed a _fiaker_, jumped in alone, and was driven rapidly in the
direction of the Heumarkt.