PIEVAKIN PLEADS GUILTY.
A lesson in Latin was in progress. The teacher was a blond Czech. Pavel
looked at him intently, trying to follow the exercises, but he only
became the more aware of the foreigner's struggles with Russian and made
the discovery that his clumsy carriage, as he walked up and down the
room, was suggestive of a peasant woman trying to catch a chicken. His
thoughts passed to Pievakin and almost at the same instant a question
flashed into his brain: If Pievakin was unreliable politically, why,
then, was he getting off so easily? How was it that instead of being cut
off from the living world, instead of being thrown into a dungeon to
waste and perish, as was done with all fellows of that sort, he was
merely transferred to another school?
The bell sounded. The Czech put his big flat record-book under his arm
and left the room. Most of the pupils went out soon after. The two long
corridors were bubbling with boys in blue, a-glitter with nickel-plated
buttons and silver galloon, some laughing over their experience with the
lesson just disposed of, others eagerly reviewing the one soon to be
recited. Pievakin passed along. The pupils bowed to him with curious
sympathetic looks, and he returned their salutes with an air of mixed
timidity and gratitude. Presently the teacher of mathematics emerged
from one of the glass doors, his deformity bulging through the blue
broadcloth of his uniform.
"Alexandre Alexandrovich!" he shouted demonstratively, and catching up
with him he threw his arm around his waist.
Pavel, who had been watching the scene, was about to return to his
class-room so as to avoid bowing to Pievakin, when, by a sudden impulse,
he saluted the two teachers, and advancing to meet them, with that
peculiar air of politeness which reminded his classmates of his equipage
and the colonnade in front of his mother's mansion, he accosted the
instructor of history and geography, turning pale as he did so:
"May I speak to you, Alexandre Alexandrovich?" When the mathematician
had withdrawn, he inquired in a tone of pain and concern: "What has
happened, Alexandre Alexandrovich?"
"Oh, I'm in trouble, prince," the old man faltered. He had never
addressed the youth by his title before, and there was a note of abject
supplication in his voice, as if the boy could help him. His face had a
pinched, cowed look.
"But, Alexandre Alexandrovich, it's a terrible thing they are accusing
you of. You've been so dear to me, Alexandre Alexandrovich. I want to
know all. I cannot rest, Alexandre Alexandrovich."
"The story is easily told. A misfortune has befallen me. While touching
upon the constitutional form of government, I was somewhat carried away.
That I don't deny. I know it was wrong of me, but I assure you, prince,
I meant no harm."
It sounded as though he were a pleading pupil and the boy before him his
teacher.
Pavel was touched and perplexed.
"But that's in the text-book, Alexandre Alexandrovich."
"To be sure it is. Only the text-book merely uses the term without
explaining it, while I, absent-mindedly, proceeded to do so, which is
against the rules, and, as ill luck would have it, I warmed up a bit.
When I was first asked about it I was not aware of having done any
wrong. I was so shocked, in fact, I lost my temper. That was the worst
of it. I am a ruined man, prince. Thirty-six years have I served the
Czar and there is not a blemish on my record."
"But why should you call yourself a ruined man, Alexandre
Alexandrovich," Pavel said impetuously. "I don't see why it should be
too late to straighten it all out. I'm going to see my uncle. Or, better
still, my mother will see him. We can't let it go that way. We should
all be a lot of scoundrels if we did. I'm going to tell him so."
"Do it, prince, if you can," the old man said with shamefaced eagerness.
"I shall never forget it."
* * * * *
When Pavel came home he found his mother's sleigh in front of the main
entrance, her coachman in dazzling attire, waiting with pompous
stolidity. When the liveried porter threw the door open to him and he
entered the vestibule he saw coming down the immense staircase his
mother and his five-year-old half-brother, Kostia, dressed for their
afternoon drive, Anna Nicolayevna in her furs and the little fellow in
the costume of a Caucasian horseman, which became his grave little face
charmingly. Following at some distance, with a smile of admiration, half
servile, half sincere, on her fresh German face, was Kostia's governess.
She was not dressed for a drive. She was merely going to see her charge
off.
"Mother, I am afraid I shall have to detain you," Pavel said, solemnly.
"I wish to speak to you about Alexandre Alexandrovich."
"Won't it keep?" she asked, with a facetious gesture.
"Don't make fun of it, mother," he reproached her. "It's a serious
matter. My head is in a whirl."
Kostia was burning to show himself in public in his new Circassian cap
and when he saw his mother yield he screwed up his face for a cry, but
he forthwith straightened it out again. He scarcely ever cried in
Pavel's presence for fear of being called "damsel" by him--an
appellation he dreaded more than being locked up alone in the
schoolroom.
They went into Anna Nicolayevna's favorite sitting-room, a square
chamber furnished and decorated in tan, in no particular style, but with
an eye to the combined suggestions of old-time solidity and latter-day
elegance. It was the embodiment of rest and silence, an effect to which
two life-sized bronze statues--a Diana and a Venus de Medici--and the
drowsy ticking of an ancient clock contributed not a little. It was
known as the English room because its former furnishings had been
modelled after London standards.
Pavel painted Pievakin as a penitent, broken spirit till Anna
Nicolayevna's eyes grew red.
"Still, maybe he does hold dangerous views?" she asked.
"Dangerous nothing! It's all nonsense. He's more loyal than Novikoff
anyhow, for Novikoff is a soulless, attitudinising nincompoop, while he
is the kindliest, most conscientious, most soulful man in the world."
"Unfortunately all this has nothing to do with loyalty," she said,
sadly. "This is a very queer world, Pasha. It's just like those
wretches who would do away with czars to be warm-hearted and good to
everybody. They don't believe there ought to be rich and poor, either.
When you come across a man of this sort keep away from him, Pasha."
"But what has that got to do with Pievakin?" he shouted. "The very sight
of a Nihilist would be enough to frighten him out of his wits. I want
you to tell it all to uncle, _mamman_. Give him no peace until he
promises you to write to the curator about the poor old man."
The governor of Miroslav was a Boulatoff, being a cousin of Pavel's
deceased father; but he was also related to the young man by marriage to
his mother's sister, who had died less than a year ago. Anna Nicolayevna
promised to see her brother-in-law the next morning, but Pavel would not
wait. He pleaded, he charged her with heartlessness, tapping the thick
rug with his foot and shaking all over as he spoke, until she agreed to
go at once.
While she was gone Pavel and Kostia went into the ball room and played
"hunter and partridge," a game of the gymnasium boys' inventing. They
had not been many minutes at it before Pavel had forgotten all about the
errand on which he had despatched his mother and the vast ball room
echoed with his voluminous laughter. His great pleasure was to tease
Kostia until the little boy's mouth would begin to twitch, and then to
shake his finger at him and say: "Better not cry, Kostia, or you know
what I am going to call you." Whereupon Kostia would make a desperate
effort to look nonchalantly grave and Pavel would burst into a new roar
of merriment.
Anna Nicolayevna came back converted to a rigorous point of view, and
although her son had no difficulty in convincing her once again that
Pievakin deserved mercy, he made up his mind to see his uncle himself,
and he did so the very next morning.
Governor Boulatoff was a massive, worn, blinking old satrap, shrewd,
tight-fisted, and, what was quite unusual for a man of his class, with
an eye to business. His nose was extremely broad and fleshy, his hair
was elaborately dressed, and altogether he looked like a successful old
comedian. Bribe-giving was as universal in Miroslav as tipping was in
its leading cafe. One could not turn round without showing "gratitude."
The wheels of government would not move in the desired direction unless
they were greased, the price of this "grease" or "gratitude" varying all
the way from a ten-copeck piece to ten or fifteen thousand rubles.
Governor Boulatoff, who had come to Miroslav a ruined man, was now the
largest land-owner in the province. Whenever he was in need of ready
cash he would galvanize into a new lease of life some defunct piece of
anti-Jewish legislation. This was known among the other officials as
"pressing the spring"--the spring of the Jewish pocketbook, that is, the
invariable effect of the proceeding being the appearance of a delegation
with a snug piece of Jewish "gratitude." He was continually sneering at
the powers behind the throne, and mildly striving for recognition; yet
so comfortable did he feel in this city of gardens, card-playing and
"gratitude," from which "the Czar was too far off and God too high up,"
that he was in mortal fear lest the promotion which he coveted should
come in the form of a transfer to a more important province.
Pavel found him in his imposing "den." The old potentate was in his
morning gown, freshly bathed, shaved and coiffured and smelling of
pomade and cigarette smoke.
"Well, my little statesman," he greeted him in French. "What brings you
so early this morning? Aren't you going to school at all?" He called him
statesman because of his ambition to follow in the footsteps of his
diplomatic grandfather.
"I shall stay away from the first three lessons," Pavel answered. "I
cannot rest, uncle. I want to speak to you about that unfortunate man."
The governor was very fond of Pavel, but he persisted in treating him as
a boy, and the only serious talk young Boulatoff got out of him
regarding Pievakin was an exhortation to give "men of that sort a wide
berth."
"But, uncle----"
"Don't argue," the governor interrupted him, blinking as he spoke. "This
is not the kind of thing for a boy of your station to get mixed up in."
"Oh, it's enough to drive one crazy. The poor man is sincerely
repentant, uncle. He'll never do it again, uncle."
"I see you're quite excited over it. Just the kind of effect fellows of
that stamp will have on the mind of a boy. This is just where the danger
comes in. Don't forget your name, Pasha. Come, throw it all out of your
clever little head. There's a good boy."
"Uncle darling, he'll never do it again. Let him stay where he is."
"You're a foolish boy. Whether he'll do it again or no, his very
presence in this town would be a source of danger. Whoever sets his eyes
on him will say to himself: 'Here is the man who once talked of the way
people live under a constitution.' So you see he'll be a reminder of
unlawful ideas. We have no use for fellows of this sort. They are like
living poison. Do you see the point? Let your teacher thank his stars
the case was not put in the hands of the gendarmes entirely, or he
would be sent to a colder place."
All this the governor said in the playful manner of one conversing with
a child and, by way of clinching the matter, he explained that he had
nothing to do with the case and that it was under the jurisdiction of
the "curator of educational district."
Pavel was in despair and his being treated as a boy threw him into a
rage, but he held himself in check for Pievakin's sake.
"Oh, the curator will do anything you ask of him, uncle," he said in a
tone of entreaty and resentment at once.
"You don't want your uncle to write letters begging for a fellow who was
foolish enough to get mixed up in such an affair as that, do you? I used
to think you really cared for your uncle."
Pavel contracted his forehead and put out his chin sullenly.