PAVEL BECOMES "ILLEGAL."
A month had elapsed. Clara was in a train, bound for Moscow, where her
lover was awaiting her arrival. The nearer she drew to her destination
the more vivid grew his features in her mind and the more violent was
her fidget. "I am madly in love with him," she said to herself, and the
very sound of these words in her mind were sweet to her. The few weeks
of separation seemed to have convinced her that the power of his love
over her was far greater than she had supposed. Things that had preyed
upon her mind before now glanced off her imagination. She wept over the
fate of Hessia and her prison-born child, yet she felt that if Pavel
asked her to marry him at once she would not have the strength to resist
him. Nay, to marry him was what her heart coveted above all else in the
world.
Being an "illegal," she had to slip into the big ancient city quietly.
As she passed through the streets, alone on a droshky, she made a mental
note of the difference in general pictorial effect between Moscow and
St. Petersburg, but she was too excited to give her mind to anything in
particular.
Her first meeting with Pavel took place in a large cafe, built something
like a theatre, with two tiers of stalls, a gigantic music box sending
up great waves of subdued sound from the main floor below. He waited
for her in front of the building. When she came they just shook hands
smilingly, and he led the way up one flight of stairs to one of the
stalls--a fair-sized, oblong private room, its walls covered with red
plush, with upholstered benching to match.
"I am simply crazy, Clanya!" he whispered, pressing her to him
tremulously.
At first they both experienced a sense of desuetude and awkwardness, so
that in spite of his stormy demonstrations he could not look her full in
the face. But this soon wore off. They were overflowing with joy in one
another.
A waiter, all in white, suave and hearty as only Great-Russian waiters
know how to be, brought in "a portion of tea," served in attractive
teapots of silver, with a glass for the man and a cup for the lady, and
retired, shutting the door behind him, which subdued the metallic melody
that filled the room still further and added to the sense of mystery
that came from it. They talked desultorily and brokenly, of her parents
and of the revolutionists gathered in Moscow. The subject of the
Miroslav riot was tactfully broached by Clara herself, but she strove to
give this part of their incoherent conversation the tone in which people
usually discuss some sad but long-forgotten event, and she passed to
some other topic as quickly and imperceptibly as she could. That he had
seen that riot he did not tell her, though he once caught himself on the
point of blurting it all out.
When she asked him about the general state of the movement he gradually
warmed up. The outlook was brilliant, he said.
Urie, the tall blond nobleman with the strikingly Great-Russian
features, who had played the part of cheesemonger on Little Garden
Street, St. Petersburg, was in Moscow now, mending the shattered
organisation. He was the centre of a busy group of revolutionists, Jews
as well as Slavs. Several well-known veterans of both nationalities, who
had been living in foreign countries during the past year or two, were
expected to return to Russia. Everybody was bubbling with enthusiasm and
activity.
"And your fiery imagination is not inclined to view things in a rather
roseate light, is it?" she asked, beaming amorously.
"Not a bit," he replied irascibly. "Wait till you have seen it all for
yourself. The reports from the provinces are all of the most cheerful
character. New men are springing up everywhere. The revolution is a
hydra-headed giant, Clanya."
"But who says it isn't?" she asked, with a laugh.
She got up, shot out her arms, saying:
"Now for something to do. I feel like turning mountains upside down.
Indeed, the revolution is a hydra-headed giant, indeed it is. And you
are a little dear," she added, bending over him and pressing her cheek
against his.
* * * * *
They had been married less than a month when he learned from a ciphered
letter from Masha Safonoff that the gendarmes were looking for him.
"Well, Clanya," he said facetiously, as he entered their apartment one
afternoon, "you are a princess no longer."
Her face fell.
"Look at her! Look at her! She is grieving over the loss of her title."
"Oh, do stop those silly jokes of yours, Pasha. Must you become
illegal?"
"Yes, ma'am. I am of the same rank as you. That puts a stop to the airs
you have been giving yourself." It was in the course of the same
conversation that he told her of his trip to Miroslav and of all that
had happened to him there.
They were known here as brother and sister, his legal residence being in
another place, but now both these residences were abandoned, and they
moved into a new apartment, in another section of the town, which he
took great pains to put in tasteful shape. Indeed, so elaborately fitted
up was it that he fought shy of letting any of his fellow Nihilists know
their new address. A table against one wall was piled with drawings,
while standing in a conspicuous corner on the floor were a drawing-board
and a huge portfolio--accessories of the role of a russified German
artist which he played before the janitor of the house. Before he let
her see it he had put a vase of fresh roses in the centre of the table.
When he and Clara entered their new home, he said in French, with a
gallant gesture:
"Madame, permit me to introduce you."
He helped her off with her things and slid into the next room, where he
busied himself with the samovar. She had with her a fresh copy of the
_Will of the People_--a sixteen page publication of the size of the
average weekly printed on fine, smooth paper; so she took it up eagerly.
Its front page was in mourning for President Garfield. An editorial
notice signed by the revolutionary executive committee tendered an
expression of grief and sympathy to the bereaved republic, condemning in
vigorous language acts of violence in a land "where the free will of the
people determines not only the law but also the person of the ruler."
"In such a land," the Nihilist Executive Committee went on to explain,
"a deed of this sort is a manifestation of that spirit of despotism the
effacement of which in Russia is the aim of our movement. Violence is
not to be justified unless it be directed against violence."
The declaration made an exceedingly pleasant impression on Clara.
"Bravo! Bravo!" she called out to her husband, as she peered into the
inside pages of the paper.
"What's the matter?" he asked her from the next room, distractedly,
choking with the smoke of his freshly lit samovar.
She made no answer. The same issue of her party's organ devoted several
columns to the anti-Jewish riots. She began to read these with acute
misgivings, and, sure enough, they were permeated by a spirit of
anti-Semitism as puerile as it was heartless. A bitter sense of
resentment filled her heart. "As long as it does not concern the Jews
they have all the human sympathy and tact in the world," she thought.
"The moment there is a Jew in the case they become cruel, short-sighted
and stupid--everything that is bad and ridiculous."
"What's that you said, Clanya?" Pavel demanded again.
She had difficulty in answering him. "He is a Gentile after all," she
said to herself. "There is a strain of anti-Semitism in the best of
them." She was in despair. "What is to be done, then?" she asked
herself. "Is there no way out of it?" The answer was: "I will bear the
cross," and once again the formula had a soothing effect on her frame of
mind. And because it had, the cross gradually ceased to be a cross.
She warmed to her husband with a sense of her own forgiveness, of the
sacrifices she was making. She felt a new glow of tenderness for him.
And then, by degrees, things appeared in milder light. Pavel's rapture
over her was so genuine, his devotion so profound, and the general
relations between Jew and Gentile in the movement were marked by
intimacies and attachments so sincere, that the anti-Semitic article
could not have sprung from any personal taste or sentiment in the
author. It was evidently a mere matter of revolutionary theory. Justly
or unjustly, the fact was there: in the popular mind the Jews
represented the idea of economic oppression. Now, if the masses had
risen in arms against them, did not that mean that they were beginning
to attack those they considered their enemies? In the depth of her heart
there had always lurked some doubt as to whether the submissive, stolid
Russian masses had it in them ever to rise against anybody. Yet here
they had! Misguided or not, they had risen against an element of the
population which they were accustomed to regard as parasites. Was not
that the sign of revolutionary awakening she had fervently been praying
for?
She went so far as to charge herself with relapsing into racial
predilections, with letting her feelings as a Jewess get the better of
her devotion to the cause of humanity. She was rapidly arguing herself
into the absurd, inhuman position into which her party had been put by
the editor of its official organ.
And to prove to herself that her views were deep-rooted and unshakable,
she said to herself: "If they think in Miroslav I am the only person who
could restore harmony to their circle, I ought to go there and try to
persuade Elkin to give up those foolish notions of his." What they were
saying about her in that town flattered her vanity. The thought of
appearing in her revolutionary alma mater, in the teeth of the local
gendarmes and police, an "illegal" known to underground fame, was
irresistible. Her thirst of adventure in this connection was aroused to
the highest pitch.
* * * * *
At eight o'clock the next morning she sat in a chair, looking at her
husband, who was still in bed, sleeping peacefully. He had an early
appointment, but she could not bring herself to wake him. She was going
to do so a minute or two later, she pleaded with herself, and then they
would have tea together. The samovar was singing softly in the next
room. It was of her love and of her happiness it seemed to be singing.
Her joy in her honeymoon swelled her heart and rose to her throat. "I am
too happy," she thought. As she remembered her determination to go to
her native place, she added: "Yes, I am too happy, while Sophia is in
her grave and Hessia is pining away in her cell. I may be arrested at
any moment in Miroslav, but I am going to do my duty. I must keep Elkin
and the others from abandoning the revolution."