THE "DEMONSTRATION."
At the hour of Pievakin's departure the Miroslav railway station was
crowded with gymnasium pupils of both sexes, but Pavel was not among
them. He had not been informed that such a gathering was in
contemplation at all.
Alexandre Alexandrovich, a satchel slung across his breast, wan and
haggard, but flushed with excitement, was bustling about in a listless,
mechanical way. He was accompanied by his large family and the teacher
of mathematics. A number of gendarmes, stalwart, bewhiskered,
elaborately formidable, were pacing up and down the large waiting room.
The gendarmerie is the political police of the Czar. It forms a special
military organisation quite distinct from the police proper. A detail of
such gendarmes, proportionate to the importance of the place, is to be
found in every railroad station of the country. On this occasion,
however, the presence of the gendarmes seemed to have some special
bearing upon the nature of the scene. They were all big strapping
fellows. Their jingling spurs, red epaulets and icy silence belonged to
the same category of things as the terrible political prisons of
Kharkoff and St. Petersburg; as the clinking of convict-chains, as the
frozen wastes of Siberia.
All at once most of the bespurred men disappeared. After an absence of
two or three minutes they came back, considerably re-enforced.
"All gymnasium pupils, ladies and gentlemen, will please leave the
station," they called out.
About one-half of the throng struck out for the doors as if the place
were on fire. Some fifteen or twenty pupils stood still, frowning upon
the guardians of the Czar's safety, in timid defiance. The rest, a crowd
of about two hundred, made a lunge in the direction of the corner where
Alexandre Alexandrovich and his family were pottering about some light
baggage, when three lusty gendarmes planted themselves in front of the
little old man.
"Go home, ladies and gentlemen, go home!" Pievakin besought his friends,
waving his hands and stamping his feet desperately.
"Have we no right to say good-bye to our own teacher?" one boy ventured.
"Not allowed!" a gendarme answered, sternly. "Get out, get out!"
The crowd surged back; but at this point a young feminine voice,
sonorous with indignation and distress, rose above the din of the
scramble:
"Good heavens! Can it be that we shall leave without saying good-bye to
our dear teacher? All they say of him is a lie, a malicious lie. They're
a lot of knaves, and he is the best man in the world. Let them arrest us
if they will, let them kill us. It would be a shame if we went away like
traitors to our dear teacher."
The rest was lost in a hubbub of shouts and shrieks. In their effort to
get at the speaker, who was shielded by the other pupils, the gendarmes
were beating young women with their sheathed swords or pulling them by
the hair. With the exception of a few who had skulked out through back
doors, the young people now all stood their ground, ready to fight.
"Arrest us all!" they yelled. "We all say the same thing."
"Yes, Alexandre Alexandrovich is the best man in the world. There!"
"A better man than Novikoff!"
"Novikoff is a hypocrite and a rogue!"
In the commotion the gendarmes lost sight of the girl they were about to
arrest. She could not have left the room, but then it was not easy to
tell her from any of the other girls. The gendarmes had seen her at a
distance, and all they could say was that she was blonde. In their
eagerness to pick her out, they were rudely scanning every young woman
in the waiting-room. Had she been arrested it would have gone hard with
her. As good luck would have it, however, Major Safonoff, the officer in
command of the railroad gendarmes, was the brother of one of the girls
present. He was a plump, good-natured bachelor, and his devotion to his
sister, who had been under his care since she was a year old, was a
source of jests and anecdotes. When it occurred to him that the
conflict, which was beginning to look like a serious affair, was likely
to cause trouble to his sister, he hastened to make light of it.
"Go home, ladies and gentlemen," he said, in a remonstrative amicable
voice, taking the matter in his own hands.
His friendly tone and his smiling fat face, added to the tacit
understanding that the girl who had made the speech was not to be
persecuted, acted as a balm; but the flattering notion that the
gendarmes had surrendered kindled new fighting blood.
"Your men have hit ladies. They've no right to hit anybody. They're a
lot of brutes. All we wanted was to say good-bye to Alexandre
Alexandrovich."
"But that's impossible, so what's the use getting excited, gentlemen?
Better go home."
The pupils obeyed, in a leisurely way, as though leaving of their own
accord.
* * * * *
During the following few weeks this "victory" over the gendarmes was the
great topic of discussion. The personality of the girl who "started the
demonstration" was emblazoned with the halo of heroism. The curious part
of it was that only a minority of those who had participated in the
scene had any idea who she was. When the crowd at the railroad station
had dispersed, the handful that knew her whispered her name to some of
those who did not, so that the number of pupils in the secret was by now
comparatively large, but it was a "revolutionary" secret, so it was
guarded most zealously against unreliable pupils as well as against the
authorities.
One of the page-proofs of the _Miroslav Messenger_ that were sent to the
censor at midnight contained the following paragraph:
"Alexandre Alexandrovich Pievakin, for many years instructor of History
and Geography at our male gymnasium, left for his new place of service
yesterday afternoon. A large number of gymnasium pupils were at the
railway station."
The entire paragraph was stricken out, so that the _Messenger_ next
morning contained not the remotest reference to the departure of the old
teacher.
When Pasha heard what had happened at the railway station his heart
sank.
"I must speak to you, mother," he gasped out, bursting into her room,
after school time. When her companion, a dried-up little Frenchwoman
with a thriving streak of black moustache, had withdrawn, he said:
"Mother, I am a miserable egoist and a scoundrel." He told her the story
of Pievakin's departure. His dear old teacher was in trouble, the victim
of a cruel injustice, yet he, Pasha, had not even thought of going to
see him off. Everybody had been there except him. But what tantalised
him more than anything else was the fact that a girl was the only person
who had taken a brave noble stand in the old man's behalf. This hurt his
knightly sense of honour cruelly. He should have been on the scene and
done exactly what that girl had done.
"I'm an egoist and a coward, _mamman_. I hate myself. Oh, I do hate
myself!"
Anna Nicolayevna's eyes grew red. She had an impulse to fold him in her
arms and to offer to take him to Pievakin's new place so that he might
protest his sympathy and affection for the old man, but her instinct
told her that this would be improper. Oh, there were so many things that
made a strong appeal to one's better feelings which were considered
improper. So she emitted a sigh of resignation and said nothing.
Pavel was pacing the floor so vehemently that he came near running into
and knocking down the life-sized Diana. He walked with rapid heavy steps
until his brain grew dizzy and his despair was dulled as from the effect
of drink. Suddenly the situation rushed back upon him.
"I tell you what, mother, he's too good for them," he said, stopping in
front of her. "He is better than uncle, anyhow."
"Hush, you mustn't say that."
"The devil I mustn't. It's true."
"You are impossible, Pasha. Can't you calm down?"
"I'll tell you calmly, then: uncle is a bribe-taker and a heartless
egoist. There."
"Dear me," she said, in consternation.
"But you know he is, mother. And do you call that loyalty to the Czar?
Pievakin is pure as an infant. If the Czar knew the real character of
both, he would know that the poor man could give uncle points in
loyalty."
A few days after this conversation the governor dined at "The Palace,"
as Countess Varoff's residence was known among the common people of
Miroslav. Pavel refused to leave his room. When Anna Nicolayevna pleaded
his uncle's affection for him, he said:
"His affection be hanged. Who wants the affection of a bribe-taker who
will let an honest man perish? Look here, mother, you have no business
to tell him I have a headache. I want him to know the truth. Tell him
it's men like himself, bribe-takers, cowards, who spread sedition, not
men like Pievakin. 'Living poison,' indeed! Tell him he is a lump of
living poison himself. Oh, I hate him, I do hate him."
His brain was working feverishly. The image of Pievakin with three
gendarmes between him and a crowd of pupils haunted him. Why could he
not be pardoned? Was there no mercy in this world? His sense of the
cruelty of the thing and of his own helplessness seized him as with a
violent clutch again and again.
Once, as he was reviewing the situation for the thousandth time, a voice
in him exclaimed: "Pardoned? What was Pievakin to be pardoned for? What
had he done? Why should it be wrong to dwell on the vital features of
parliamentary government? Such governments existed, didn't they? And if
they did, then why should one be forbidden to explain their essence?"
For the first time did his attention fix itself on this point, and
questions came crowding upon him. Where was the sense of having such
terms as "limited monarchy" in the text-book at all, if the pupils were
not to be told what this meant? Above all, why should the government be
afraid of such explanations? There seemed to be something cowardly,
sneaking, about all this which jarred on Pavel's sense of the knightly
magnificence of the Czar and left him with a bad taste in the mouth, as
the phrase is.
Alexandre Alexandrovich, then, had done no wrong, and yet he had been
banished as "living poison," treated by everybody as a criminal, until
he came to believe himself one. Why, of course he was better than
Novikoff. Novikoff was a self-seeking, posing wretch, and all the other
teachers were cringing and crouching before him; and these insects
turned their backs upon Alexandre Alexandrovich! Corruption passed for
loyalty, and a really good man was persecuted, hunted down like a wild
beast, trampled upon. "Trampled upon, trampled upon, trampled upon!"
Pavel whispered audibly, stamping his foot and gnashing his teeth as he
did so.
The only gleam of light was the veiled figure of that gymnasium girl.
She alone had had sympathy and courage enough to raise her voice for the
poor man. "Why, she is a perfect heroine," he said in his aching heart.
At the gymnasium he felt his loneliness more keenly than ever. Wherever
he saw a cluster of boys, he felt sure they were whispering about the
gendarmes and the girl who had made the "speech" at the railroad
station. His pride was gone. He now saw himself an outcast, shut out of
the most important things life contained.
The leader of the "serious-minded" boys in Pavel's class was an underfed
Jewish youth, with an anaemic chalky face and a cold intelligent look,
named Elkin. To Pavel he had always been repugnant. Since Pievakin's
departure, however, the aristocratic boy had looked at his classmates in
a new light, and Elkin now even inspired him with respect.
"Who is the girl that made that speech at the station?" he asked simply.
The two had scarcely ever spoken before.
Elkin gave Boulatoff a stare of freezing irony, as who should say: "What
do you think of the assurance of this man?" and then, dropping his eyes,
he asked:
"What girl?" When he spoke his lips assumed the form of two obtuse
angles, exposing to view a glistening lozenge of white teeth.
"Look here, Elkin, I want to know who that girl is and all about the
whole affair, and if you think I ought not to know it because--well,
because I am a Boulatoff and my uncle is the governor, I can assure you
that if I had been there I should have acted as she did. What's more, I
hate myself for not having been there."
"I don't know what you're talking about," replied Elkin. "As to your
hating yourself, that's your own affair."
"Well, however I may feel toward myself, I certainly have nothing but
contempt for a man like you," Pasha snapped back, paling. "But if you
think you can keep it from me, you're mistaken."
Elkin sized him up with a look full of venom, as he said:
"Pitiful wretch! How are you going to find it out? Through the political
spies?"
Pavel turned red. It was with a great effort that he kept himself from
striking Elkin. After a pause he said:
"Now, I can tell you from the bottom of my heart that you are a knave."
"Besides," said Elkin, as though finishing an interrupted remark, "most
of the gymnasium girls who saw Alexandre Alexandrovich off are daughters
of poor, humble people, so of what interest would it have been to a man
in your position?"
Boulatoff stood still for a few moments, and then said under his breath:
"Well, you're a fool as well as a knave," and turned away.
The heroine of the demonstration was hateful to him now. She and Elkin
seemed to stand at the head of the untitled classes all arrayed against
him. He retired into himself deeper than ever. He abhorred her because
she had done the right thing, and each time his sympathy for Pievakin
welled up he hated himself for not having been at the station, and her
for having been there. He sought relief in charging Elkin with
cowardice. "What did he do there?" he would say to himself. "To think of
a lot of fellows running away when they are told they can't say good-bye
to their martyred teacher, and a girl being the only one who has courage
enough to act properly. And now that she has done it this coward has the
face to give himself airs, as if he were entitled to credit for her
courage. If I had been there I should not have run away as Elkin and his
crew did."
This placed Elkin and his followers on one side of the line and Pavel
and the girl on the other. So what right had that coward of a Jew to
place himself between her and him?
* * * * *
Toward spring, some two months after the old teacher's departure, and
when the incident was beginning to grow dim in the public mind, the
sensation was suddenly revived and greatly intensified by an
extraordinary piece of news that came from the town to which Pievakin
had been transferred: The Third Section of His Majesty's Own Office--the
central political detective bureau of the empire--had taken up the case,
with the result that the action of the Department of Public Instruction
had been repudiated as dangerously inadequate. The idea of a man like
Pievakin participating in the education of children! Accordingly, the
poor old man was now under arrest, condemned to be transported to
Viatka, a thinly populated province in the remote north, where he was to
live under police surveillance, as a political exile strictly debarred
from teaching, even in private families.
Pavel was stunned. He received the news as something elemental. He could
find fault with his uncle, but the government at St. Petersburg was a
sublime abstract force, bathed in the effulgence of the Czar's
personality. It was no more open to condemnation than a thunderstorm or
a turbulent sea. But the incident made an ineffaceable impression upon
him. It left him with the general feeling that there was something
inherently cruel in the world. And the picture of a pretty girl boldly
raising her voice for poor Pievakin in the teeth of formidable-looking
gendarmes and in the midst of a crowd of panic-stricken men remained
imbedded in his fancy as the emblem of brave pity. An importunate sense
of jealousy nagged him. He often caught himself dreaming of situations
in which he appeared in a role similar to the one she had played at the
railroad station.
His perceptions and sensibilities took a novel trend.
One day, for example, as he walked through Theatre Square, he paused to
watch an apple-faced ensign, evidently fresh from the military school,
lecture a middle-aged sergeant. The youthful officer sat on a bench,
swaggeringly leaning back, his new sword gleaming by his side, as he
questioned the soldier who stood at attention, the picture of
embarrassment and impotent rage. A young woman, probably the sergeant's
wife, sweetheart, or daughter, stood aside, looking on wretchedly.
Seated on a bench directly across the walk were two pretty gymnasium
girls. It was clear that the whole scene had been gotten up for their
sake, that the ensign had stopped the poor fellow, who was old enough to
be his father, and was now putting him through this ordeal for the sole
purpose of flaunting his authority before them. When the sergeant had
been allowed to go his way, but before he was out of hearing, Pavel
walked up to the ensign and said aloud:
"I wish to tell you, sir, that you tormented that poor man merely to
show off."
"Bravo!" said the two gymnasium girls, clapping their hands with all
their might; "bravo!"
The ensign sprang to his feet, his apple-cheeks red as fire. "What do
you mean by interfering with an officer--in the performance of his
duty?" he faltered. He apparently knew that the young man before him was
a nephew of the governor.
"Nonsense! You were not performing any duties. You were parading. That's
what you were doing."
The two girls burst into a ringing laugh, whereupon the ensign stalked
off, mumbling something about having the gymnasium boy arrested.
"Mother," he said, when he came home. "The world is divided into
tormentors and victims."
Anna Nicolayevna gave a laugh that made her rusty face interesting. "And
what are you--a tormentor or a victim?" she asked. "At any rate you had
better throw these thoughts out of your mind. They lead to no good,
Pasha."