A DAY UNDERGROUND.
About a week had elapsed, when Pavel read in his morning paper of the
hanging of three revolutionists in Odessa: two Gentiles and a Jew. He
had never met these men, but he knew that two of them had not been
implicated in anything more violent than the diffusion of socialist
ideas. Also that the parents of the one who belonged to the Jewish race
were under arrest, condemned to be exiled to Siberia for no other crime
than their having given birth to an enemy of the existing regime.
Pavel moved about his room with a sob of helpless fury in his throat. He
found feverish satisfaction in the thought that he had some chemicals in
his overcoat which he was to carry to the dynamite shop of the
Terrorists. The explosives to be made from it were intended for a new
attempt upon the life of the Emperor. Not being directly connected with
the contemplated attack, neither he nor the dynamite makers of the
organisation had any clear idea about the plot, which was in the hands
of a special sub-committee, Alexandre's place having been taken by
another man; but he did know that preparations were under way in the
Winter Palace.
The dynamite shop was kept by a woman with a deep-chested, almost
masculine voice, and a man with a squeaky feminine one. They were
registered as man and wife. She was the daughter of a priest, but she
looked like a woman of the people and dressed like one--a thick-set
extremely blonde young woman with coarse yet pleasing features. Her
revolutionary name was Baska. Her fictitious husband, who was one of the
chemists of the party, was addressed by the revolutionists as Grisha. He
had a scholarly face, yet the two had no difficulty in passing among the
neighbours for a tradesman or shop clerk and his wife. For the greater
reality of the impersonation and as a special precaution against
curiosity they made friends with the porter of the house and his wife
and with the police roundsman of the neighbourhood, often inviting them
to a glass of vodka. The porter of St. Petersburg, like his brother of
Paris under the empire, is a political detective "ex-officio." The two
spies and the police officer were thus turned into unconscious witnesses
of the young couple's political innocence, for in the first place they
had many an opportunity to convince themselves that their dwelling was
free from anything suspicious and, in the second, people who drank vodka
and went, moreover, on sprees with the house porter, certainly did not
look like Nihilists.
"Good morning, Pavel," Baska greeted him vivaciously, as she gave his
hand a hearty squeeze, while her other hand held a smoking cigarette.
"Just in time! I hate to eat my breakfast all alone. Grisha has another
bad headache, poor fellow. But I see you, too, have a long face. Where
did you get it?"
Pavel smiled lugubriously as he handed her the package. He had not the
heart to disturb her good spirits, and she went on chirping and
laughing.
Grisha came in, haggard, sickly and trying to smile. The skin of both
his hands was off. This, like his frequent headaches, was the effect of
the work he did in these rooms--of inhaling nitroglycerine and kneading
dynamite with his bare fists.
Baska gayly told how the porter's wife had offered her a salve for her
"husband," and how the night before, as Grisha was pouring
nitroglycerine into some dynamite "dough," there was an explosion and
the house filled with smoke.
"Our next door neighbour knew at once that our kerosene stove exploded
and set fire to a rag," Baska said with a deep-voiced titter. "She gave
me quite a lecture on negligence."
"She only wondered why there should be such a strange smell to the
smoke," Grisha added, his hand to his head.
As Pavel looked at Baska relishing her tea and her muffin and talking
merrily between gulps, a desire took hold of him to spoil her vivacity.
It jarred on him to see her enjoy herself while the image of the three
new gallows was so vivid in his mind.
"You people don't seem to know what's going on in the world," he said
testily. "They have hanged Malinka, Maidanski and Drobiazgin."
"Have they?" Baska asked paling. She had known two of them personally.
While Pavel took out his newspaper and read the brief despatch, her head
sank on the table. Her solid frame was convulsed with sobbing.
"Be calm, be calm," Grisha entreated, offering her a glass of water. In
spite of her excellent physique she was subject to violent hysterical
fits which were apt to occur at a time when the proffer of neighbourly
sympathy was least desirable.
She told all she remembered of the executed men, whom she had met in
the south. But that was not much; so Pavel went to see Purring Cat who,
being a southerner, had detailed information to give him about the three
Nihilists. Boulatoff could talk of nothing else that day. When he met
Makar, in the afternoon, he said:
"People are being strangled right and left and here you are bent on that
_idee fixe_ of yours."
"Fine logic, that," Makar replied. "If my _idee fixe_ had been realised
a year ago these men would now be free. But this is not the time to talk
about things of that kind." Instead of mourning the loss of the three
revolutionists he was in a solemn, religious sort of mood at the thought
of the new human sacrifices offered on the altar of liberty. He was
panting to speak about the Jew who had been executed. He was proud of
the fact that two men of his race had given their lives for the cause
within five months. The other Jewish revolutionist had been executed in
Nicolayeff. A letter which he had addressed to the revolutionists a few
days before his execution, exhorting them not to waste any of the forces
of the movement on attempts to avenge his death, was enshrined in
Makar's heart as the most sacred document in the entire literature of
the struggle. But race pride was contrary to the teachings of the
movement; so he not only kept these sentiments to himself, but tried to
suppress them in his own bosom.
* * * * *
In the evening Pavel took two young cavalry officers of his acquaintance
to the house of a retired major where a revolutionary meeting was to be
held. They found the major's drawing room sparkling with military
uniforms. The gathering was made up of eight officers, two men in
citizen's clothes, and one woman, the dark long-necked hostess.
Two cheap lithographs, one of General Suvoroff and the other of the
reigning monarch, occupied the centre of the best wall, in jarring
disharmony with the refined and somewhat Bohemian character of the rest
of the room. The two portraits had been put there recently, to bear
witness to the political "reliability" of the house. The hostess
presided over a pile of yellow aromatic tobacco, rolling cigarettes for
her guests and smoking incessantly herself. An idiotic-looking
man-servant and a peasant girl fresh from the country kept up a supply
of tea, zwiebacks and preserves. Every time they appeared the hostess,
whose seat commanded the door, would signal to the company. She did it
rather perfunctorily, however, the revolutionary discussion proceeding
undisturbed. The cultured, bookish Russian of the assemblage was Greek
to the two servants. They talked of the three executions.
Presently two other civilians were announced.
"At last!" the hostess said, getting up from her pile of tobacco in a
flutter.
The two newcomers were both above medium height, of solid build and
ruddy-faced; but here their similarity of appearance ceased. One of them
looked the image of social refinement and elegance, while the clothes
and general aspect of the other bespoke a citified, prosperous peasant.
His rough top-boots, the red woolen belt round his coat and the rather
coarse tint of his florid complexion, like his full Russian beard,
proclaimed the son of the unenlightened classes. He was taller than his
companion and remarkably well-built, with a shock of dark brown hair
thrown back from a high prominent forehead and regular features. He was
introduced to the gathering as Zachar. He and the stylish-looking man by
his side whose revolutionary nickname was "My Lord," conveyed the
effect of a bright, shrewd tradesman and a high-class lawyer bent on
some legal business.
"If we are late, blame this guide of mine, not me," Zachar said to the
hostess, in a deep, rather harsh baritone, pointing at his companion.
"It turned out that he did not know the place very well himself. There
is a pilot for you." He accepted a glass of tea in a silver holder and
during the ensuing small talk the room rang with his merriment. His
jests were commonplace, but his Russian and all he said betrayed the man
of education. The tradesman's costume was his disguise, and if it became
him so well it was because his parents were moujiks. Born in serfdom but
brought up as a nobleman at the expense of his former master, this
university-bred peasant--a case of extreme rarity--for whom the
gendarmes were searching in connection with a bold attempt to blow up an
imperial train, loomed in the minds of the revolutionists as the most
conspicuous figure of their movement.
"And how is my young philosopher?" he said to Pavel. "I was at your
place this morning, but found you out, Pasha."
"I'll see you later on," Pavel said dryly. "Philosopher" referred to the
nature of the studies which Pavel's mother thought him to be pursuing.
There was a touch of patronage in the way Zachar used the word, and
Pavel resented it.
As the gathering began to lapse into a graver mood the conversation was
expectantly left to Zachar, who by degrees accepted the role of the
principal speaker of the evening. That he relished this role and was
fond of a well turned phrase became apparent at once, but the impression
soon wore off. He compelled attention.
"The practice of nations being inherited like furniture or chickens has
been out of date for centuries," he said in the course of a ferocious
attack on the existing adjustment of things. "But our party does not
demand full justice at once. The Will of the People is not
inconsiderate. We are willing to project ourselves into the position of
an old chap with whom the love of power has been bred in the bone. All
our party does demand, as a first step, is some regard for the rights of
the individual; of those rights without which the word civilisation is
of a piece with that puerile sort of hypocrisy as our late war with
Turkey, when the ambitious old fellow in his unquenchable thirst for
territory sent his subjects to die for the liberty of Bulgarians so that
their own children at home might be plunged into more abject slavery
than ever.
"The government knows, of course, that its days are numbered and that it
is only cowardice and incapacity for concerted action which make its
brief respite possible. To retreat honourably, before it is too late, to
yield to the stern voice of the revolution under some specious
pretext--this is the step indicated by the political situation, but then
this is not what the ambitious oldster is after. Is there any wonder he
has lost his head? So much the better for the revolution. One or two
decisive blows and the government will topple over. Thanks to the
splendid army section of the Will of the People, on the one hand, and to
our powerful Workingmen's Section, on the other, one hundred resolute
men will be enough to seize the Winter Palace, to cut off all egress,
arrest the new Czar and, amid the general confusion following the death
of the old tyrant, proclaim a provisional government. What a glorious
opportunity to serve one's country!"
His speech lasted an hour and a half. Most of his hearers were recent
converts, and these the matter-of-fact tone of his utterances took by
storm. The Third Section had heard of him as an irresistible agitator.
So he was, and the chief secret of his success lay--despite an effect of
conscious floridity and bravado--in a sincere depth of conviction
manifested by a volcanic vehemence of delivery. His speeches took it for
granted that Russia was at the threshold of a great historical change
and that his organisation was going to play a leading part in that
change. He gathered particular assurance from the fact that the "army
section" that had been formed by his efforts included several officers
of the court guard whose number he hoped to increase. These court
officers it was whom his imagination pictured as "cutting off all
egress" at the Winter Palace. The funds of his party included
contributions from some high sources. Things seemed to be coming the
"Will of the People's" way. As he spoke his strong physique seemed to be
aflame with contagious passion, sweeping along audience and speaker. The
harshness of his mighty baritone was gone; his peasant face was
beautiful. Words like "party," "citizen," "National Assembly," are
winged with the glamour of forbidden fruit in Russia, and when Zachar
uttered these words, in accents implying that these things were as good
as realised, his audience was enravished. To all of which, in the
present instance, should be added the psychological effect of a group of
dashing army officers, all members of the nobility, reverently listening
to an address by a peasant. He struck one as a giant of energy and
courage, of nervous vitality as well as of bodily strength. He had the
stuff of a political leader in him. Under favourable conditions he would
have left his mark as one of the strong men of the nineteenth century.
He carried people along current-fashion rather than magnetised them.
Pavel was the next speaker, but the outraged sense of justice which was
the keynote of his impassioned plea, coming as it did upon the heels of
Zachar's peremptory and matter-of-course declarations, sounded out of
date.
"Oh, it takes an idiot to talk after you, Zachar," he said, breaking off
in the middle of a sentence. "One feels like being up and doing things,
not talking. I wonder why we don't start for the Winter Palace, at
once."
"That's the way I feel, too," chimed in a very young cavalry officer,
while two older men in brilliant uniforms, were grasping Zachar each by
one hand. The long-necked hostess was brushing the tears from her eyes
and calling herself "fool," for joy.
An artillery officer with bad teeth of whom Pavel could not think
without thinking of the rheumatism of which that revolutionist had once
complained to him, drew his sword fiercely, the polished steel flaming
in the bright light of the room, as he said:
"By Jove!"
"Look at him! Look at him!" Zachar shouted.
"Bridle your passions, old boy," Pavel put in.
A minute or two later he called the orator into the next room and handed
him what looked like a package of tobacco.
Zachar was in high feather over the success of his speech and loath to
leave the atmosphere of adoration that surrounded him here; but an
important engagement forced him to take his departure.
* * * * *
A quarter of an hour's ride in a tramcar and a short walk through the
moonlit streets brought him to a deserted corner in the vicinity of the
Winter Palace, where he was met by a man dressed like an artisan, as
tall as himself, but slimmer of girth, and the two went on trudging
along the snow-encrusted sidewalk together. The other man had an
expressive sickly face which the pallid glare of the moonlight gave a
ghastly look.
"How is your health?" Zachar asked.
"Bad," the sickly looking man answered, holding out his hand into which
Zachar put the package of tobacco, saying:
"See if it isn't too heavy for a quarter of a pound."
"It is, rather, but it'll pass," the other replied, weighing the package
in his hand and then putting it into his pocket. Buried in the tobacco
was a small quantity of dynamite.
"It's too bad you are not feeling well."
"Yes, my nerves are playing the devil with me. The worst of it is that I
have got to keep the stuff under my pillow when I sleep. That gives me
headaches."
"I shouldn't wonder. The evaporations of that stuff do that as a rule.
But can't you find another place for it?"
"Not for the night. They might go through my trunk then. They are apt to
come in at any time. Oh, those surprise visits of theirs keep my
wretched nerves on edge all the time."
While the gendarmerie and the police knew him to be a leader among the
revolutionary workmen of the capital and were hunting for him all over
the city, this man, whose name was Stepan Khaltourin, had for the past
few months been making his home, under the name of Batushkoff, in the
same building as the Czar, in the Winter Palace, where his work as a
varnisher was highly valued. He was a self-taught mechanic, unusually
well-read and clear-headed. Of retiring disposition and a man of few
words, with an iron will under a bashful and extremely gentle manner,
he was one of the prominent figures of the Will of the People, having
been driven to terrorism by the senseless persecutions which he had met
at the hands of the authorities in his attempts to educate some of his
fellow-workmen. He now lodged, together with other mechanics, in
the basement of the Winter Palace, with only one room--the
guard-room--between the ceiling over his head and the floor of the
Imperial dining hall. Indeed, the frequent raids which a colonel at the
head of a group of gendarmes had been making upon that basement since
the seizure of "Alexandre's" diagram were largely a matter of display
and red tape. There was more jingling of spurs and flaunting of
formidable looking moustaches than actual searching or watching. Nowhere
was the incapacity of Russian officialdom illustrated more glaringly
than it was in the very home of the Czar. The bold Terrorist for whom
the police were looking high and low had found little difficulty in
securing employment here, and one of the first things that had attracted
his attention in the place was the prevailing state of anarchy and
demoralisation he found in it. Priceless gems and relics were scattered
about utterly unguarded; stealing was the common practice of the court
servants, and orgies at which these regaled their friends from the
outside world upon wines from the imperial cellars were a nightly
occurrence. Since Alexandre's arrest the vigilance of the court
gendarmes had been greatly increased, so that no servant could enter the
palace without being searched; yet Khaltourin contrived to smuggle in a
small piece of dynamite every evening, thus gradually accumulating the
supply that was needed for the terrible work of destruction he was
preparing.
As to his position within the palace, he played his role so well that he
was the favourite of gendarmes and servants alike, often hearing from
them stories of the Nihilists and of the great plot to blow up the
dining hall that was supposed to have been nipped in the bud.
"Well, how is that old gendarme of yours?" Zachar inquired. "Still
teaching you manners?"
"Yes," Khaltourin answered with a smile. "I am getting sick of his
attentions, though. But there is something back of them, it appears.
What do you think he's after? Why, he has a marriageable daughter, so he
has taken it into his head to make a son-in-law of me."
"Ho-ho-ho-ho!" Zachar exploded, restraining a guffaw.