A LESSON IN NIHILISM.
I was not a little annoyed that so soon after Olga had warned me
against the wiles of Paula Tueski, she should come just when my most
unwelcome lover was in my rooms--and at such a moment. But I thrust
aside my irritation--which was not against Olga--and went to her,
curious to learn what had brought her to visit me.
She told me in a few sentences. A friend had been to warn her that I
was in danger from the Nihilists and that unless I took the greatest
care, I should be assassinated. The poor girl was all pale and
agitated with alarm on my account, and had rushed off to hand the
warning on to me. She was half hysterical. She wanted me to fly at
once, to claim the protection of the British Consulate; to proclaim my
identity and get away even before my passport came from her brother.
"There is not the danger you fear, Olga," I said, reassuringly. "I
shall find means to avoid it. But I want to speak to you about another
matter. Paula Tueski is here"--my sister shrank back and looked at me
with a hard expression on her face such as I had not seen there in all
our talks. Evidently she hated the woman cordially. "You are right in
your estimate of her in one respect, and for the moment she has beaten
me. Much as I dislike the business, we must manage to blind her eyes
and tie her hands for the moment--or I for one see none but bad
business ahead."
"How comes she to be here?" asked Olga, in a voice of suppressed anger.
"I will tell you all that another time," I answered, speaking hurriedly
and in a very low tone. "Another point has occurred to me. She is
very bitter against you and has been urging your brother to get you to
receive her. This was to have been done last night. My apparent
refusal to speak to her at all came as a crowning insult, and she was
mad. There is one way in which I think we might the more easily
deceive her, if you can bring yourself to do it. Come in now and let
me present her to you: or let me go and tell her that you will call on
her."
"Will it make things safer for you?" she asked, always thinking of the
trouble into which she would persist in saying she had brought me.
"It would make them safer for you, I think."
"I care nothing for myself. She can't harm me. Do you wish it? Do
you think it desirable? I will do it if you say yes." She spoke so
earnestly that I smiled... Then she added:--"Ah, it is so good to have
someone that I can trust. That's why I leave it to you."
"I don't wish it," I answered, gravely, "because she is the reverse of
a good woman, but I do think it would be prudent."
"Let's go to her at once," cried the girl, getting up from her chair
readily. "We can talk afterwards. That's the one privilege...." she
checked herself and then coloured slightly. I pretended not to notice
it; but this absolute confidence pleased me not a little.
"Bear in mind, we are only playing a part with this woman," I whispered.
"I know. She is too dangerous for me ever to forget that, or to play
badly." She dashed a glance of quick understanding at me and then
seemed to change suddenly into a Russian grande dame. An indescribable
air of distinction manifested itself in a hundred little signs, and she
carried herself like a stately duchess, as we entered the room where
Paula Tueski sat waiting impatiently.
A great glad light of triumph leapt into the latter's eyes as she saw
Olga was with me, and she, too, drew herself up as I made the two
formally known to each other. It was a delightful bit of comedy. Olga
was full of quite stately regrets that she had not had the pleasure of
knowing the other long before: said that her brother's friends were, of
course, her friends; and that she hoped to call that week on Madame
Tueski and that Madame would find an opportunity of returning the visit
speedily. She made such an appearance of unbending to the other, that
the difference between them was all the more pronounced.
Madame Tueski on her side was too full of the seeming triumph over us
to be able to be natural with my sister; and she alternately gushed and
froze as she first tried to captivate and then would remember that Olga
was only consenting through compulsion to know her. The result was as
ridiculous as an episode could be beneath which lurked such
possibilities of tragedy.
It lasted only a few minutes when I suggested, and I had a purpose,
that the two should leave the house together. I wished to get rid of
Paula Tueski without further love-making: and desired in addition that
if there were any spies about the house they should see the two
together, so that if any tales were carried to the Chief of the Police
they should be innocent ones.
"I will call later in the day if possible," I promised Olga, as she
left.
"Ugh, how I hate her;" was the whispered reply, inconsequential but
very feminine. And I shut the door on the two and went back to my room
to think out this new set of most complicated problems.
Paula Tueski's visit had changed everything; and I saw it would be
foolish not to look that fact straight in the face. I could not see
how things would end; but certainly flight, for the time, was simply
impossible. For myself, I did not much care. I had had a few hours of
excitement which had completely drawn me out of the morbid mood in
which I had arrived in Moscow; and nothing had happened to make me much
more anxious to live than I had been then.
Life might have been endurable enough, if I could have gone on with my
army career as Lieutenant Petrovitch; but not if the abominable and
disgraceful intrigue were to be added as a necessary condition. That
would be unendurable: and had I been a free agent, I would have ended
the whole thing there and then, by admitting the deception and putting
up with the results. Indeed, it occurred to me that in a country like
Russia, where I knew that courage stood for much and military skill for
more, the reputation I had managed to make would be likely enough to
tell in my favour if I told the truth and asked leave to volunteer.
But was I a free agent?
Look at the thing as I would I could see no means by which I could get
out of the mess, even taking my punishment, without leaving my sister
in deep trouble. If Paula Tueski found that I had humbugged her and
that Olga was in the plot, it was as plain as a gallows that she would
be simply mad and would wreak her spite on the girl.
Could I leave Olga to this? The words of confidence she had spoken
were still echoing in my ears--and very pleasant music they made--and
could I quietly save my own skin and leave her in the lurch? It was
not likely that I should do anything of the sort; and I didn't
entertain it for a moment as a possibility. The girl had trusted to
me; and I must make her safety the first consideration of any plan I
formed.
But how?
I could see only one way. It was that she should get out of Moscow,
and indeed out of Russia altogether. It was not probable that the
woman Tueski would place any obstacle in the way, provided I did not
attempt to leave as well; and I came to the conclusion that the best
possible course would be for Olga to take her departure at once. She
could go and join her brother in Paris, or wherever he had gone; and
then I could carry on alone the play, farce, burlesque, comedy, or
tragedy, as it might prove.
It was early evening before I could get round to see Olga, and then I
had to spend some time with her aunt, the Countess Palitzin, an ugly,
garrulous and dyspeptic old lady, who wanted to hear all about the
Devinsky business over again: and then went on to tell me of some
famous duels that had happened in her young days.
I observed that Olga was very thoughtful during the interview with the
aunt, but as soon as we were alone she put her hand into mine and with
a look that spoke deep feeling and pleasure, said:--
"You could have done nothing that would have better pleased me--nothing
could shew so clearly that you understand me better than anyone ever
did before. I have seen the girl and listened to her story and
questioned her. I think there is yet good in her and I am convinced
she tells the truth. She longs to be separated from her dreadful
father...."
"He leaves for Kursk to-morrow," I said.
"Good. Then I will make the care of the others my charge. I don't do
much that is useful; and if I can make that life happier and give the
child the chance of growing up to be a good Russian, I shall have done
something. What say you?"
She seemed more admirable than ever in my eyes for this; but I
hesitated a moment what to say; and she, quick to read my looks, added,
her own features taking a reflection of my doubts:--
"But of course that is all subject to your opinion. Is there anything
else you think better? But I should like this very much:" and a smile
broke over her face.
"The plan is excellent; but there is a difficulty, unless you can make
your arrangements at once and permanently, or at any rate for a
considerable time ahead. Or you might perhaps better arrange for the
mother and child to leave Russia."
The girl looked perplexed; and fifty little notes of interrogation
crinkled in her forehead and shot from her eyes.
"There is something behind that, of course," she said. "What is it?"
"I think it would be the best plan if you yourself were to go away on a
little tour. You have had the idea of leaving Russia, you know, and
going to your brother as soon as he has made a home in Paris, or
wherever he stops."
"Well?" when I paused.
"Bluntly, I think you would be safer across the frontier;" and I told
her at some length my reasons.
"But what of you? Do you think I do not wish to share the success
which my brother is enjoying here? Or are you thinking of leaving
Russia also?" By a swift turn of the head she prevented me from seeing
her face as she asked this.
I laughed as I answered lightly:--"No. The state of my health,
combined with regimental duties, social engagements, Nihilistic
contracts, and other complications render it a little difficult to
leave at present."
The girl did not laugh, however, but kept her face turned from me; and
I could not help admiring the poise of the head and the graceful
outline it made against the grey evening light falling on her from the
window.
She seemed so much more womanly than the laughing girl I had met first
on the Moscow platform, and it was difficult to think that so short a
time had passed since then. I filled up the long pause during which
she appeared to be making up her mind what answer to give me, by
thinking what a pleasant sister she was and how sorry I should be to
lose her.
"Well?" I asked, when the pause had lasted a very long time.
"I am very much obliged to you for your advice," she said, turning
round and looking coldly at me, and speaking in a formal precise tone;
"but I find myself unable to take advantage of it. I cannot
conveniently leave Moscow just now." Then just when I was at a loss to
know how I had offended her, she changed suddenly. She stamped her
foot quite angrily, a flush of indignation reddened her cheeks and her
eyes flashed as she looked at me and cried:--"And I thought you
understood me! Do you think we Petrovitch's are all cowards? And that
I am like Alexis, having got you into this fearful trouble would run
away and leave you to get out of it alone?" For an instant she
struggled with her emotion. Then she exclaimed: "It is an insult!" and
bursting into tears she rushed out of the room.
I stared in blank amazement at the door after it had closed behind her,
and wondering what it was all about, left the house in a medley of
confused thoughts, in which regret for having in some clumsy way
worried her and the consciousness that she was really a plucky girl
intermingled themselves with the memory of how pretty she had looked in
her emotional indignation. The thought of her tears, and that I had
caused them, gave me the worst twinges, however; and this kept
recurring and bothering me during the whole evening.
At the club, where I went from Olga's house, I was careful to maintain
the same part as on the previous day: the character of a stern,
reserved, observant man, moody but very resolute and determined. Not a
sign of the bully nor a symptom of braggadocio: but just the kind of
man who, while quite willing to let others take their own way in life,
means to take his. Unready to force a quarrel, but equally unready to
pass over a slight; and relentless if involved.
This was pretty much my own character, with some of the dash and life
pressed out of it; and it was easy enough for me to maintain it. That
night I played a little. I knew I had formerly been a pretty heavy
gambler; but to-night I purposely stopped short in the full tide of
winning. I had lost at first, and the luck turned with a rush, as it
will, and as soon as I had pulled back my losses I stopped, to the
astonishment of all who had been accustomed to find in me a heavy
plunger.
"You'll be donning the cowl, next, Petrovitch, and preaching
self-denial," said one, a handsome laughing youngster who had been
bemoaning his own losses a minute before.
"A good thing for the Turks, if he does it before the war," said
another subaltern.
Some others chimed in, and it was easy to see from the drift of the
talk how genuine was the turn in the tide of opinion about me.
I left the club and wanting fresh air while I thought over matters I
went for a short walk. I knew the City pretty well, of course, owing
to my long residence there; and the changes since I had left were not
very considerable.
Walking thoughtfully down one of the broad streets I became conscious
that I was being followed. I had had a similar sensation before; but
what Paula Tueski had told me about being watched and guarded, and the
warning that Olga had given me now caused me to attach more importance
to the matter.
It is one of the most hateful sensations I know, to feel that one's
footsteps are being dogged by a spy. I turned round sharply several
times, and each time noticed a man at some distance behind me trying to
slip out of sight. He was clever at his business, and several feints I
made in the attempt to shake him off failed. But I escaped him at
length in the great Church of St Martin. Everyone knows the many
outlets of that enormous pile. It has as many entrances as a rabbit
warren, and most of them are nearly always open. I went in by one door
and left instantly by another, and running off at top speed, I was out
of sight before the spy could well know I had left the building. I
seemed to breathe more freely as soon as I had shaken the fellow off.
I stayed out some time, renewing my acquaintance with several parts of
the city; and it was late when I reached home--so late that the streets
were deserted.
This fact nearly cost me my life.
I was passing a narrow street when, without the slightest
warning--though I cannot doubt that in some way my approach had been
signalled--four men rushed out on me with drawn knives. By mere chance
their first rush did not prove fatal; for two of them who struck at me
came so close, that the knives gashed my clothes.
But when they missed their chance, I did not give them another. I
sprang aside, whipped out my sword, sent up a lusty cry for help that
made the houses ring again, and set my back against the wall to sell my
life as dearly as I could. They closed round me and attacked
instantly; a swift lunge sent my blade through one of them, a swinging
cut made another drop his knife with a great cry of pain, and an
unexpected, but tremendously violent back-handed blow with the hilt of
my sword right in the face sent a third down reeling and half senseless.
[Illustration: A swinging cut made another drop his knife with a great
cry of pain.]
This sort of reception was by no means what they had expected; and as a
shout in answer to my cry for help came from a distance, the unwounded
man and the two who could get away rushed off at top speed; while the
fourth who had only been dazed, struggled to his feet and would have
staggered off as well had I let him. But I stopped him, made him give
up his knife, and then I drove him before me to my rooms--only a very
short distance off--without waiting for the man to come up who had
replied to my shout for help. I did not want any help now. No one man
was at all likely to do me any harm, and I might thus get to know the
cause of the attack, without being troubled with any outside
interference.
"Now, why did you seek to kill me?" I asked sternly, as soon as the man
was in my room. "You're not a thief; your dress and style shew that.
Why, then, do you turn assassin?"
"There should be no need for me to tell you that," said he, speaking
with vehemence.
"Nevertheless, I ask it," I returned, with even more sternness.
Evidently I was going to make another discovery; and when the man
waited a long time before answering, I scanned him closely to see if I
could guess his object. Clearly he was no thief. He was fairly well
dressed in the style of an ordinary tradesman or a superior mechanic;
his appearance betokened rather a sedentary life and his muscles had
certainly not been hardened by any physical training. As certainly he
was no police spy. He was the last man in the world to have been
picked out for such a job as that of the attempt on my life. There was
no probability of there being any private feud against me; that seemed
ridiculous.
I could only conclude, therefore, that the attack was from the
Nihilists. The man looked much more like an emissary of that
kind--able to give a sudden thrust with a sharp knife; but incapable of
doing more. The instant I had come to this conclusion, and I came to
it much more quickly than I can write it, I resolved what to do.
"I am glad this encounter has taken place--not omitting the result, of
course," I added grimly. "There is no cause whatever for this decree."
The man's lip curled somewhat contemptuously, as I made this protest.
He seemed to have formed the average low estimate of the value of my
word. Everywhere I turned I was met by the worthlessness of the scamp
whose name I now bore. The contempt silenced, even while it angered,
me.
"You did not attend," he said curtly. "A man's absence is poor proof
of either innocence or courage. You are not only a traitor but a
coward."
"What!" I turned on him as if he had struck me.
This puny, pale, insignificant weakling faced me as dauntlessly as if
the positions were reversed and I was in his power, not he in mine.
"You are brave enough here now, no doubt--you armed against me
unarmed." He threw this sneering taunt at me with deliberate insolence.
I stared at him first in amazement, and then in admiration.
I had but to raise my hand to kill him with a stroke. He read my
thoughts.
"What do I care for my life, do you think? Take it, if you like. One
murder more--even in cold blood--is a little matter to a soldier."
A couple of turns up and down the room cooled me.
"I don't want your life," said I, calmly. "Though it's dangerous to
call me a coward, and were you other than what you are, I'd ram the
word down your throat. With you, however, I'll deal differently. You
say I was afraid to attend your last meeting. I'll do better than
merely call that a lie, I'll prove it one. Call another meeting in as
big a place as you can, pack it with all the deadliest cut-throats you
can find, resolve to shoot me down as I enter the door, and if I dare
not attend it, then call me coward--but not till then." My blood was
up now, and I spoke as hotly as I felt.
"Will you come?" asked the man.
"Call the meeting and see. Nay, more. Between now and the time of the
meeting think of the wildest and most dangerous scheme that you can to
test what a desperate man can do for the cause, and give me the lead in
it. And when I've failed, write me down traitor, and not till then.
And now, go, or by God I may forget myself and lay hands on you."
My voice rang out in such sharp stern tones that the man's antagonism
was beaten down by my earnestness. My fierceness seemed to fire him,
and when I threw open the door for him to go, he stood a moment and
stared into my face, his own all eagerness, light and wildness. Then
he exclaimed in a tone of intense excitement:---
"By God, I believe you're true after all." And with that he went.
It was not until the man had been gone some time and I was pacing up
and down my room, still excited, and revolving the chances of this,
perhaps the most desperate of all the complications which threatened
me, that I saw a letter on tinted paper, lying on my table. I took it
up and found it was from Olga, and my thoughts went back with a rush to
her and to the circumstances under which I had left her that evening.
The letter was not very long.
MY DEAR BROTHER,
"I have not ceased to regret the hasty words I spoke to you this
evening. Forgive me. Of course you do not think me a coward; and I
can see now that you must have some other motive for wishing me to
leave Moscow and Russia, while you remain here alone to face--what may
have to be faced. But whatever your reason is, I cannot do it. Do you
understand that? I cannot. That is stronger than I will not. I think
you know me. If so, you know that I will not. If I thought you
believed me capable of leaving you in the lurch after having brought
all this on you, I should wish I had never had--such a brother. I will
never even let you mention the matter to me again.
Your sister,
OLGA."
I read this letter through two or three times, each time with a higher
opinion of the staunch-hearted little writer. And at the end I
surprised myself considerably by pressing the letter involuntarily to
my lips.
She was a girl worth a good tough fight.