OMINOUS FOOTSTEPS.
Clara alighted from the train at a station immediately preceding
Miroslav. She was met by Olga, the girl with the short hair and sparse
teeth who was engaged to the judge, the two reaching the city partly on
a peasant's waggon, partly on foot. At sight of the familiar landscape
Clara seemed weird to herself. It was her own Miroslav, yet she was
worse than a stranger in it. She felt like a ghost visiting what was
once his home. On the other hand, the unmistakable evidences of the
recent riot contracted her heart with pain and brought back that
Reproach.
Olga took her to a "conspiracy house." This was a basement in the
outskirts of the town, whose squatty windows faced the guardhouse of
military stores and commanded a distant view of the river. The only
other tenants of that courtyard were three sisters, all of them deaf and
in a state of semi-idiocy. The basement had been rented soon after
Clara's flight. It consisted of three rooms, all very meagrely
furnished. Lying under the sofa of the middle room was a wooden roller,
which had once been intended for a secret printing office. One of the
walls was hung with a disorderly pile of clothes of both sexes--the shed
disguises of passing conspirators.
But very few members were allowed to visit her. Those who were saluted
her with admiring looks and generally treated her as a heroine, which
caressed her vanity most pleasantly. With a temerity born of an acquired
habit of danger, not unmixed with some bravado, Clara was burning to
visit her parents, her sister and her mother-in-law, and to take a look
at her native neighbourhood. Her friends made an effort to keep her
indoors. She would not be restrained, assuring them that she was going
to take good care of herself, but she finally offered to compromise on a
meeting with her sister, provided she brought her little girl with her.
"I am crazy to see her," she said, meaning the child.
"See little Ruchele! Why you _are_ crazy, Clara!" Olga declared. "If you
do all Miroslav will know the very next day that 'Aunt Clara' is in
town."
"Nonsense. She won't know me. She has not seen me for more than a year.
Besides, I'll wear my veil. Oh, I must see her; don't oppose me, Olga,
dear."
* * * * *
The meeting took place on a secluded bit of lawn under a sky suffused
with the lingering gold of a dying sunset. And sure enough, Ruchele was
extremely shy of the lady in black. When Clara caught her in her arms
passionately she set up a scream so loud that her mother wrenched her
from her aunt's embrace for fear of attracting a crowd from a
neighboring lane.
* * * * *
A debate between Clara and Elkin was to take place in Orlovsky's house
the next evening. A few hours before the time set for the gathering
Clara received an unexpected call from Elkin. This was their first
meeting since her arrival, and she welcomed him with sincere cordiality.
She respected him as her first teacher of socialism. As to his love for
her, which could still be read in his eyes, it flattered her now.
"Well," he said, trying to take a light tone, but betraying agitation.
"There is some news in town. Clara Yavner has been seen about."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that Clara Yavner has been seen about," he repeated with
sarcastic articulation. And by way of putting a period to the sentence,
he opened his lips into a lozenge-shaped sneer and leaned his head
against the mass of hung-up clothes under which he sat on an oblong
stool.
She was seated on another tabouret, with her back to the low window. His
manner exasperated her. "But I have been out only once," she retorted
calmly, controlling her anger, "and then I was heavily veiled."
"Well, could not some people have recognised you by your figure and
carriage? I am sure I could. At any rate your cousin, Vigdoroff, was to
see me a little while ago, for the express purpose of conveying this
message to you, Clara. The gossips of Cucumber Market are whispering
about your having been seen in town, 'and in addition to truths no end
of fibs are being told.' Your mother is quite uneasy about it,
and--well, Clara, at the risk of having it set down to a desire on my
part to slip out of the debate, I should suggest that you take no
further chances and leave Miroslav at once."
"Oh, nonsense. Am I not safe in this basement at least?"
"Yes, I think you are, but if the police should get wind of your
presence in town, why, they would not leave a stone unturned. They have
been itching for a chance to tone down their reputation for stupidity
ever since your disappearance."
She smiled and frowned at once.
"Besides," he went on, leaning back against the clothes and gazing at
the ceiling, "if that debate is your chief mission here I am willing to
capitulate in advance. You know I cannot debate with you, Clara. I am
still in your power. My brain is in a whirl in your presence. It is at
this moment. If that debate took place I should simply not know what I
was talking about. You would not wish me to make an exhibition of the
abject helplessness that comes over me when I see you, would you?"
His words, uttered in monotonous accents, contrasted so sharply with the
air of mockery that had attended his former attempts at an avowal; they
sounded so forlornly simple, his spirit was so piteously broken that he
seemed a changed man. She was touched.
"Don't speak like that," she said kindly. "I'll do as you say. I'll
leave Miroslav at once."
"Is there absolutely no hope for me, Clara?"
"I am no longer free, Elkin. I am a married woman," she said, flushing
violently. "Let us change the subject. Tell me something about your
Americans."
He dropped his eyes, and after a rather long pause he said, blankly:
"Well, pardon me, then. You have my best wishes, Clara. I say it from my
heart. I shall be your warmest friend as long as I live. I confess I
dreamed of your joining our party, so that I might be near you, and
hoped that some day you would become mine."
"The right place for a revolutionist is here, in Russia, Elkin."
"Nobody is going to try to persuade you to leave the movement," he said,
levelling a meek, longing look at her. "The Russian people act like wild
beasts toward our poor Jews, Clara; yet they and the Russian revolution
will ever be dear to our hearts. We appreciate that it is their
blindness which makes such brutes of them. We shall always think of
those who are in the fight here; we shall adore you; we shall worship
you, Clara; and perhaps, too, we shall be able to do something for
Russian liberty from there. But if you condemn us for joining the
emigrants, I wish to say this, that if you had been in Miroslav during
the riot you would perhaps take a more indulgent view of our step. So
many Jewish revolutionists have sacrificed their lives by 'going to the
people'--to the Russian people. It's about time some of us at least went
to our own people. They need us, Clara."
"Look here, Elkin," she said with ardent emphasis, striving to deaden
the consciousness of his love-lorn look that was breaking her heart,
"you must not think I am so soulless as to take no interest in the
victims of those horrors, for I do. I do. I can assure you I do. I have
been continually discussing this question in my mind. I have studied it.
My heart is bleeding for our poor Jews, but even if it were solely a
question of saving the Jews, even then one's duty would be to work for
the revolution. How many Russian Jews could you transport to America and
Palestine? Surely not all the five million there are. The great majority
of them will stay here and be baited, and the only hope of these is a
liberated Russia. All history tells us that the salvation of the Jews
lies in liberty and in liberty only. England was the first country to
grant them the right to breathe because she was the first country where
the common people wrested rights for themselves. The French revolution
emancipated the Jews, and so it goes. If there were no parliamentary
governments in Western Europe, the Jews of Germany, Austria, or Belgium
would still be treated as they are in Russia. When Russia has some
freedom at least, her Jews, too, will be treated like human beings."
"But we are not like the Palestinians, Clara. We don't propose to
estrange ourselves from the revolutionary movement. We shall support it
with American money, and we hope to fit out expeditions to rescue
important prisoners from Siberia, and to take them across the Pacific
Ocean to our commune."
"Dreams!" she said, laughing good-naturedly.
The discussion lasted about an hour longer. He had not the strength to
get up, and she had not the heart to cut him short. They listened to
each other's arguments with rapt attention, yet they were both aware of
the unspoken other discussion--on the pathos of his love--that went on
between them all the while they talked of the great exodus.
And while she commiserated Elkin and felt flattered by her power over
him, her heart was full of yearning tenderness for her husband, of joy
in him and in her honeymoon with him.
When Elkin rose from his seat at last he said:
"By the way, I came near forgetting it--your cousin wants to see you."
"Volodia? Volodia Vigdoroff? I thought he would dread to come near me."
Time being short, the meeting was set for an early hour the very next
morning. Elkin had made his adieux, but he still lingered. There was an
extremely awkward stillness which was broken by the appearance of Olga.
Then he left.
Disclosing the location, or, indeed, the existence, of a "conspiracy
house" to one uninitiated into underground life was impossible.
Accordingly, Vladimir was to meet Clara in a scanty pine grove near the
Nihilists' basement. On his way thither Vladimir was continually looking
over his shoulder, lest he was being followed by spies. He was flurried
and the sight of every policeman he met gave him a moment or two of
abject terror. But the part he had taken in the fight of the Defence
Guard had left him with a sense of his own potential courage; so he was
trying to live up to it by keeping this appointment with his "illegal"
cousin, whom he was so thirsting to see. That she was married he did not
know. He was going to persuade her to join his American party. At this
minute, in the high-strung state of his mind, the result of recent
experiences, he felt as though she were not merely his "second sister,"
which is Russian for cousin, but a real one. His chief object for
seeking this interview, however, had been to celebrate his own
vindication. By her enthusiasm for the revolutionary movement from which
he stayed away she had formerly made him feel like a coward and a
nonentity; now, however, that in his judgment the riots plainly meant
the moral bankruptcy of that movement, so far at least as it concerned
revolutionists of Jewish blood, he mentally triumphed over her.
The meeting had been fixed for an early hour. The air in the woods was
cold and piquant with the exhalations of young evergreens. The grass,
considerably yellowed and strewn with cones, was still beaded with dew,
save for a small outlet of the clearing which was being rapidly invaded
by the sun.
They met with warm embraces and kisses.
"Clara, my sister! If you only knew what we have gone through!" he said,
with the passion of heartfelt tragedy in his subdued voice.
"How is uncle? How is auntie?" she asked with similar emotion.
His kiss and embrace had left an odd sensation in him. He had never had
an occasion to kiss her before; and now that he had not seen her for
about a year the contact of his lips with the firm, though somewhat
faded, cheek of this interesting young woman had revealed to him what
seemed to be an unnatural and illicit fact that she was not a sister to
him, but--a woman.
They seated themselves in a sunny spot.
"Are you really going to America, Volodia?" she inquired with a familiar
smile, carefully hiding her grief.
"I certainly am, and what is more, I want you to come along with us," he
answered, admiring her figure and the expression of her face as he had
never done before. "Oh, I am quite in earnest about it, Clara. You see,
the fist of the rioter has driven it home to me that I am a Jew. I must
go where my people go. Come, Clara, you have staked your life for the
Russians long enough, and how have they repaid you? Come and let us do
something for our own poor unfortunate Jews."
She listened with the attention of one good-naturedly waiving a
discussion.
"And what has become of that bridge you were building?" she asked.
"And what has become of that gallows, of the martyr's scaffold, which
you said united Jew and Gentile? Has _that_ done anybody any good? As to
the bridge I was building across the chasm that divides us from the
Christians, I admit that it has been wrecked to splinters; wrecked
unmercifully by that same fist of the rioter. I dreamed of the
brotherhood of Jew and Gentile and that fist woke me. The only point of
contact between Jew and Gentile possible to-day is this"--pointing at a
scar slightly back of his ear, his badge of active service as a member
of the Defence Committee.
"Why, did you get it in the riot?" she asked with a gesture of horror.
"It's a trifle, of course. Others have been crippled for life, but such
as this bit of a scar is it will stand me in good stead as a reminder
that I am a Jew. The fact is now everlastingly engraven on my flesh.
There is no effacing it now. But joking aside, Clara, I love the Russian
people as much as I ever did. My heart breaks at the thought of leaving
Russia. I don't think the Russians themselves are capable of loving
their people as I do. But it can't be helped. There is an impassable
chasm between us."
He was conscious of being on his mettle, as though the fiascoes he had
sustained in his last year's talks with her were being retrieved. As to
her, there was a look of curiosity and subtle condescension in her eye
as she listened. But she was thoroughly friendly and warm-hearted, so
for the moment he saw nothing but encouragement to his flow of
conversation. From time to time he would be seized with mortal fear lest
they should be pounced upon by gendarmes, but he never betrayed it.
At one point, when he had put a question to her and paused, she said,
instead of answering it:
"Really, Volodia, I somehow can't get it into my head that you are
actually going to America."
"Oh, I am, I am. I am going to that land 'where one's wounded feelings
are sure of shelter.' Come along, Clara. Haven't you taken risks enough
in Russia? Come and serve your own people, your poor, trodden people.
Have not the riots been enough to open your eyes, Clara?"
"As if those were the only riots there were," she returned, pensively.
"All humanity is in the hands of rioters."
"But our homes are being destroyed, Clara," he urged in an impassioned
undertone. "Our people are being plundered, maimed, their every feeling
is outraged, their daughters are assaulted."
"Is there anything new in that?" she asked, in the same pensive tone.
"Are not the masses robbed of the fruit of their toil? Are they not
maimed in the workshops or in the army? Are not their daughters reduced
to dishonour by their own misery and by the lust of the mighty? Are not
the cities full of human beings without a home? All Russia is
riot-ridden. The whole world, for that matter. The riots that you are
dwelling upon are only a detail. Do away with _the_ riot and all the
others will disappear of themselves."
A note of animation came into her melancholy voice.
"What you 'Americans' propose to do," she continued, "is to clasp a
handful of victims in your arms and to flee to America with them. Well,
I have no fault to find with you, Volodia. I wish you and your party
success. But the great, great bulk of victims, Gentiles as well as Jews,
remain here, and the rioters--the throne, the bureaucracy, the
drones--remain with them."
She struck him as amazingly beautiful this morning and she seemed to
speak as one inspired. He listened to her with a feeling of reverence.
"But you have done enough, Clara," he said when she finished. "You have
faced dangers enough. Sooner or later you will be taken, and then--" (he
threw up his hands sadly). "You have a perfect right to save your life
and liberty now."
She shook her head.
"You are a wonderful woman, Clara. By George, you are! Therefore, if you
are arrested, it will be a great loss not only to your relatives, but to
all the Jews. Haven't the Gentiles robbed us enough?"
"Would you have them rob us of our sacred principles, too?" she
retorted, with a faint smile. "Indeed, the right to die for liberty is
the only right the government cannot take away from the Jew."
"Come to America, Clara."
"Oh, that's utterly impossible, Volodia," she answered, gazing at the
cones.
* * * * *
The discovery that Prince Boulatoff was prominently connected with the
underground movement, which originated in the confession of one of his
revolutionary pupils, had created considerable excitement in St.
Petersburg. The secret service had no difficulty in securing his
photograph, and when it was shown to the little man who had acted as an
errand boy at the celebrated cheese-shop he at once identified him as
one of those who dug the mine. That Pavel had recently been in Miroslav
was known to the whole town. Accordingly, the central political
detective office at St. Petersburg despatched several picked men there
to scent for his underground trail. These practically took the matter
out of the hands of the local gendarmes, whom they treated with
professional contempt. They gradually learned that Pavel had been a
frequent visitor at Orlovsky's house, and then they took to shadowing
Orlovsky and those in whose company he was seen. They made discovery
after discovery.
One of these imported spies was the fellow who once shadowed Clara in
St. Petersburg--the tall man with the swinging arm and the stiff-looking
neck whom she met on the day when the revolutionist with the Greek name
was arrested.
It was about 8 o'clock in the evening, some ten minutes before train
time, when this spy saw an uneducated Jewish woman in blue spectacles
crossing the square in front of the station. She seemed familiar to him,
yet not enough so to attract serious attention.
It was Clara. Her disguise, in addition to the blue spectacles,
consisted of a heavy Jewish wig, partly covered by a black kerchief, and
an old-fashioned cloak. To spare her the risk of facing the gendarmes of
the station, her ticket had been bought for her by somebody else, her
intention being to slip into her car at the last moment. Having reached
the place too early, however, she was now trying to kill the interval by
sauntering about. This time the spy escaped her notice, but a little
later, less than a minute before the third bell was sounded and while
she was scurrying through the third class restaurant, she caught sight
of him, as he stood half leaning against the counter drowsily.
Here he had a much better look at her. She certainly was familiar to
him, but he was still unable to locate her, and before he knew his own
mind he let her pass. It was not until the train had pulled out, and its
rear lights were rapidly sinking into the vast gloom of the night, that
it dawned upon him that she looked like the girl he used to spy upon in
St. Petersburg. Blue spectacles as a means of concealing one's identity
are quite a commonplace article, so he called himself names for not
having thought of it in time and hastened to telegraph to the gendarmes
at the next station to arrest the young woman, giving a description of
Clara's disguise and general appearance.
Some three quarters of an hour later an answer came from the next
station that the train had been detained for a careful search, but that
no such woman could be found on it.
* * * * *
While that search was in progress Clara, her disguise removed, entered
the "conspiracy house," where Olga had been waiting for her, in case she
should have found it inconvenient to board the train.
"There you are!" Olga said, in despair, as she beheld her friend's
smiling face in the doorway. "What has happened?"
"It's a fizzle, that's all. But it might have been worse than that.
There is a St. Petersburg fellow at the station. He knows me."
"Did he see you?" Olga demanded breathlessly.
"I should say he did," Clara replied with another smile. "Well, I
thought it was all up. Gracious! didn't my feet grow weak under me. But
my star has not gone back on me yet, it seems. I got into one of the
cars just as the third bell was heard. I was sure he was close behind
me, but, when I turned around, looking for a seat, I saw he was not
there. He must have gone to another car for the moment, or something.
Anyhow, I tried to get out again. I thought I had nothing to lose,
and--here I am. But look here, Olya[E], are you sure there is nobody
outside?"
[E] Diminutive of Olga.
"I think I am," Olga answered firmly. "Why?"
"I thought I saw a queer looking individual as I turned into this
street. I must have been mistaken. Still, I confess, the presence of
that fellow in this town is anything but a pleasant surprise to me. I
don't like it at all. I wonder why we have not heard from Masha about
him."
The reason they had not heard from her was simply this, that the
invasion of the St. Petersburg detectives had had such an overbearing
effect on everybody in the local gendarmerie that her brother had become
unusually reticent on the affairs of his office even at home.
* * * * *
Two or three hours had passed, when Clara and Olga heard an ominous
confusion of footsteps in the vestibule. The next moment the room was
crowded with men, some in uniforms, others in citizens' clothes. One of
the St. Petersburg officers rushed to a window where a blue medicine
bottle--Clara's "window signal"--stood on the sill, to prevent either of
the two Nihilist girls from removing it by way of warning to their
friends.
"You here!" the tall, baronial-looking procureur, Princess Chertogoff's
son-in-law, said to Olga, in amazement. He bowed to her most
chivalrously, but she turned away from him with a contemptuous gesture.
"And may I ask for _your_ name, Miss," a gendarme officer accosted
Clara.
"I decline to answer," she returned, simply. Her eyes were on a pistol
which she saw in the hand of one of the gendarmes.
"You live in Miroslav, don't you?"
Instead of answering this question she sprang at the man who held the
pistol, seized it from him and began firing at the wall. This was her
substitute for a removal of the safety signal from the window.
The weapon was instantly knocked out of her hand by a blow with the flat
of a gleaming sword, and she was forced into a seat, two men holding her
tightly by the arms, while a third was tying a handkerchief around her
bleeding hand.
"I merely wanted to alarm the neighbourhood," she said calmly. "But, of
course, you people will turn it into a case of armed resistance."
* * * * *
When Orlovsky learned of Clara's and Olga's arrest, one of his first
thoughts was about notifying Pavel, of whose relations toward Clara he
had by this time been informed. It appeared that the only man he knew
who had "underground" connections in the two capitals and was in a
position to communicate with Boulatoff was the former leader of the
Miroslav Circle, Elkin. This, however, did not stop Orlovsky. To Elkin
he went and explained the situation to him.
"Elkin, darling, you know you are a soul of a fellow," he implored him.
"Pavel is either in St. Petersburg or in Moscow, and you are the only
man who could get at him."
Elkin stood, thinking glumly, at the window for a few minutes, and then
said:
"Very well, I am going."
He started on the same day, accompanied by a spy. That evening Orlovsky,
the judge and several other members of the Miroslav Circle, were
arrested at Orlovsky's house, and a few days later news came from Moscow
that Pavel and Elkin had been taken in a cafe, while Makar had fallen
into a "trap" at the house of an old friend of Elkin's, who had been
seized several hours before.