THE THIRD SECTION
It was a quarter to one o'clock before Ivan finally shut the door upon
his guests--the hand of none of whom had he touched in farewell. And
they, as they went out into the May night, knew that they had left their
friendship behind forever; but only one of them would let a little
heavy-heartedness melt away in tears. Irina, hanging on her brother's
arm, wept, quietly, all the way back to the Alkheskaia.
In spite of all their genuine regret, however, there was not one of them
who carried Ivan's bitterness to bed with him that night. They believed
in the righteousness of their act. He saw it as it was: cowardly and
cold-blooded murder. Here, then, was a little more faith lost; one more
tradition gone; another shred of his remnant of faith in humanity torn
from him and flung into the mud. During the whole of the following week
he carried his load silently about with him. The papers were filled with
the story of the assassination, the details of the public funeral, the
condition of his widow, and the incomprehensible escape and continued
liberty of the assassin. It had been still light when the man--all were
agreed that it had been a man,--halted in the shadow of a doorway till
his victim's vehicle was in the road opposite him. Then he had shot the
fatal bullet, stepped calmly out of the doorway, and, mingling with the
quickly gathering crowd, passed at once from the sight of the one or two
who _believed_ they had seen him shoot. And now he had disappeared into
the wilderness of the city. Though a reward of three thousand roubles
was offered for his capture, none had, as yet, brought so much as a
clew.
Ivan spent the week absorbing these reiterated facts, and trying,
vaguely, to resolve them into some sort of order: to come to some sort
of decision regarding his own course of action. Certain he was that he
knew where to lay hands upon Ternoff's assassin. Certain also was he
that, if he gave Burevsky up to justice--his father's "justice," the
responsibility of Burevsky's execution or exile would be on his
conscience forevermore.
What to do?
Burevsky and his companions had used him ruthlessly, as their
shield.--Ivan had no idea of how slight had been the advantage they took
in comparison with predecessors of his.--Why should he hesitate to visit
them with _his_ ideas of right?--But, though he came forever to this
point he always left it again, unanswered, and went reluctantly back to
the beginning of his syllogism. The men had been his friends. He had
liked them more than he had known. He had broken their bread. Could he
deliver them up to their fearful retribution?--God help him, he could
not: criminals, menacing society, though they were.
It took Ivan an entire week to come to the simple and obvious decision
of a middle course, so harassed and over-excited had his brain become.
But when, on the morning of May 17th, it suddenly occurred to him to go
to Sergius and make a clean breast of his doubt and his self-reproach,
he could hardly constrain himself to wait till his classes were over and
a mouthful of luncheon swallowed before he betook himself, in a swift
droschky along the bank of the river, till he came to the bridge across
which lay the Student Quarter. Thence he proceeded, on foot, through the
maze of ugly little streets, wherein the spring sunshine only showed up
all the more pitilessly their meanness, and filth, and ugliness. Once at
the house in which the brother and sister lodged, he went up the rickety
stairs unheeding any of the customary sights and sounds, till, arriving
at Sergius' door, he started a little to find it wide open. Five minutes
later he returned to that door in a state of yet greater bewilderment;
for both rooms were empty of occupants.
Sergius and Irina were gone; but, as their belongings were scattered
about in the usual untidiness, Ivan argued return. Throwing off his hat,
then, he filled and lighted a pipe, seated himself at the battered
piano--sole remaining relic of old Petrov Lihnoff, and now too
dilapidated for sale--and yielded himself for an hour to that most
dangerous luxury of the serious composer: improvisation.
Interested in the little theme he had developed, Ivan lost count of
time, and nearly two hours passed before he was interrupted. There was a
sound of feet running rapidly up-stairs, and then there burst into the
room Burevsky: bare-headed, leaden-hued, eyes aflame, his left hand
hanging, crushed and bloody, at his side, in his right a pistol, its
barrel glinting in the light.
Ivan was on his feet, facing the other, who stared at him as he gasped,
between his quick breaths:
"_You_, Gregoriev!--_You!_--Go, instantly!--_Leave_ the house at the
back;--there may be time!--You--"
"But for God's sake, Burevsky, what's the matter?--Where are Sergius and
Irina?"
"Irina got away, thank God!--We managed that, last night.--See here,
Ivan, she's at--"
The next word was drowned in the sharp report of a pistol-shot, which
was instantly followed by another. Afterwards came a wild rush on the
stairs, a low, hoarse cry, the screams of some women in the lower rooms,
and then the room was invaded by Tronsky and Stassov, who were followed
by Sergius and Féodor Lemsky dragging between them Lemsky's brother,
Boris. Him they laid at once upon a sofa, dripping as he was with the
blood which still gushed from a wound under his heart. He was murmuring,
incoherently. Perhaps he was conscious of receiving his brother's kiss.
But it was his last mortal impression. Immediately afterwards his jaw
fell, his eyes stared wide. One of them, at least, would not see
Siberia.
And now, without a word, the five--Lemsky, stunned and silent, with
them, began hurriedly to pile furniture before the closed and bolted
door. Ivan, still standing motionless by the window, transfixed with
horror, watched, as piano, table, chairs, finally a bed, were built into
a barricade. Already, however, their movements were accompanied by the
sound of voices and the trampling of feet in the hall outside. Ivan
realized that the combat was about to recommence; and he was moving
vaguely towards the group of students when Sergius seized him by the
shoulder and drew him across to the door of the other room. As they went
he sketched, in three or four vivid sentences the events following the
shooting of Ternoff: the finding of the pistol-dealer, who had put the
police upon the assassin's track; Burevsky's fugitive week; Irina's
escape; the sudden discovery of the arrangements for Burevsky's
departure an hour ago; then the return flight from the station to their
own quarter, ending in this final stand. Now they were in the back room,
and Ivan listened, dully, while Sergius explained that he might escape
even yet, by means of the rear window and a rope, which he drew from
behind the porcelain stove and put into Ivan's hands. Then came one word
of regret and farewell. The door was slammed upon him and he heard the
bolt upon the other side shot home.
Instantly Ivan, roused too late, sprang after his friend and began
beating furiously upon the door, calling to be admitted. In vain. His
words were completely drowned in the furious clamor now rising from the
hall beyond. Shot after shot rang out, punctuating sharply the fierce,
steady pounding at the barricade, and the low, dull, but intensely
penetrating murmur of the crowd gathering about the house in street and
alley. Once again, listening, calculating possibilities, Ivan stood
motionless, horror in his eyes, chaos in his brain. How long the fight
beyond him endured he had no idea. Very suddenly, however, the clamor
ceased, and, out of the silence, rose the tones of a deep, official
voice, repeating the formal sentences of accusation and arrest. These
were given but three times; and the names were those of Lihnoff,
Stassov, and Féodor Lemsky. In his heart Ivan realized at once the
reason for this; but the pangs of grief in him came as no surprise. What
he now did seemed natural to him. To the prisoners in the outer room it
was wanton madness. They, and the policemen who were still working upon
the ruins of the barricade, heard the sound of sharp rapping on the
inner door. An officer, uttering an exclamation, ran to it and
unfastened the bolt. The next instant Ivan walked quietly into the
wrecked room, and gazed about him at the ruin, where, in the midst of
splinters and scraps of wood, empty cartridges, and greasy
blood-streaks, lay three bodies: Lemsky, the first sacrifice; Burevsky
the assassin; and Vladimir Tronsky, a gentle, beardless boy. Empty
window-frames, splintered glass, and the ends of two ladders on the
sills, showed how an entrance had finally been effected; for old
Petrov's piano, now a mass of splintered wood and twisted wire, had
served its owner to the last.
There was some manifestation of surprise at Ivan's appearance; but he
was at once seized, handcuffed, and provided likewise with ankle-chains,
which permitted of a step of about eight inches. Then he was ranged
beside the other three, who noticed him in no way. And, though he knew
that the lack of recognition was for his own safety, it hurt,
unaccountably. The anger, the repulsion for these youths, was gone from
him now; and at heart he sided fanatically with them against their
captors. But it had not as yet occurred to him that his own plight was
far from pleasant.
There was an interminable, official wait. Little by little the crowd
outside was broken up by police, who feared a possible attempt to
liberate the prisoners when they should emerge. The golden light of the
May afternoon was fading softly into the silvery white night of the
north. A chill had crept into the air. Inward discomfort began to remind
Ivan that a day had passed since he had eaten substantially; for at noon
he had been too full of the prospective interview to linger over
luncheon. But there was small hope of speedy refreshment now; and the
hunger of prisoners is traditional.
By degrees, however, he drifted into one of his customary reveries,
which was hardly broken by the termination of their wait. Under a guard
of flattering size, the "politicals" were escorted down the silent,
empty stairs and into the street, where two ordinary carriages awaited
them. On emerging from the smoke-filled, blood-spattered house into the
clean, cold evening air, Sergius looked keenly about him for some sign
of deliverance or of sympathy. None came. The street was like that of an
abandoned city. On penalty of fine, every inhabitant was within doors.
One moment, and the world was shut away from the prisoners, perhaps for
the rest of their lives. The four of them were divided and placed two in
a carriage, facing two guards who sat with loaded pistols on their
knees: on the box an armed driver and a sergeant of police. The windows
were closely curtained, and, during the long drive, not one glimpse was
to be caught of street or building. Nevertheless, Ivan knew that they
had not crossed the river. That meant that they were not at once to go
to the "politicals'" prison nor to the formal offices of the police. But
one house in this part of the town seemed likely to be their
destination. That was the gubernatorial palace: surely an unusual
destination, Ivan thought, even considering the crime for which they
were to suffer.
It was as they were finally alighting from the vehicle that Ivan's
companion, Stassov, managed at last to speak, in a whisper so rapid and
so low that Ivan barely caught it:
"We get our trial now. This examination will be all we'll have.--Be
careful."
Then, for the first time, Ivan's heart sank, terribly. Another instant,
and it was in his throat. Their destination had not been the palace of
the Governor; but that of the chief of the Moscow Third Section. Ivan
was entering his boyhood home!
* * * * *
An hour had passed. Ivan, Sergius, and four guards were sitting silently
in the antechamber to Prince Michael's inner room. They alone were left;
for, Stassov first, then Lemsky, had been led away into that dreaded
chamber, and had not returned. Of what passed at their examinations,
Ivan could only guess. But his imagination being now on fire, he felt
that the crossing of that threshold would be little less awful than that
of a doomed heretic into the torture-chamber of the Spanish Inquisition.
Of the memories, realizations, and foreboding of those sixty minutes, it
is difficult to speak, clearly. From the stunned calm of the first
moment of shock, Ivan had drifted gradually into a fever of acutest
feeling. To him, now, his situation assumed monstrous and distorted
proportions; for he expected no jot or tittle of favor from the father
who had cast him so completely out of his life. Moreover, back of all
the melodrama of the present, lay a black shadow of haunting memory:
memory of the house in which he sat; of his impressionable, childish
days within it; of Nathalie; of Ludmillo; finally, above all, her image
enveloped in a shining aura of passionate appreciation, his mother: of
the sorrow of her tender life; and the poignant bitterness of her death.
It was to this tapestry of the past that he added now his vivid mental
pictures of present events; the revelations concerning the character of
his new friends; of Irina, her treachery and her remorse; and finally,
incongruity that made the fantasy perfect, over all, through all, there
wound, caressingly, the notes of the little melody that had that
afternoon flowed from his fingers on to Sergius' battered piano:--the
melody which now forms the principal theme of the weirdest of his tone
poems; the "Saturnalia of the Red Death," taken from Poe's wild tale.
At length, while he sat drearily working his numbed fingers, Piotr
entered for the third time and summoned Sergius, away into the inner
room. Before he went, Irina's brother turned his face to his companion
and looked at him; and in that look Ivan read all that the student had
tried to express in it: his remorse, his anguish, his sorrow for the
treachery that had ruined his friend. It was strange how, by that look,
the hearts of both were lightened.
Ivan waited long alone, under the curious eyes of the guard who saw in
him a type very different from that of the usual "political." Even these
men, uneducated as they were, believed, in their hearts, that there was
a mistake somewhere about this fellow. And yet, as for his chances of
release with the great Chief within there--bah! They were not worth the
price of a rusty nail.
In the end it was with an air dogged, half-sullen, half-resentful, that
Ivan, concealing his face by keeping his head bent down, followed his
father's old servitor along the short passage to the closed door of
Prince Michael's cabinet. Immediately there came a word of command from
within. The door was opened, and Ivan was pushed into the room.
It contained only one man, seated at a great work-table covered with
orderly piles of documents. At first sight, the years seemed to have
passed over Michael's head leaving him untouched; but, as Ivan stepped
into the light of a low-hanging lamp, his father gave a sudden start, a
hoarse gasp, and then fell back into his chair again--an old man. Ivan,
though he had been gripping himself for the ordeal, felt himself turn
slowly white, closed his eyes for an instant, and reopened them to meet
the diamond-bright glare of his father's look. At that, moved by a
combination of emotional strain, physical exhaustion, and nervous
tension, he suddenly began to laugh. It was his father who brought him
back to himself again: his father, who sat slowly rubbing one hand
across his brows, and muttering, as one in a daze:
"_Toi!--Toi, Ivan!--Dieu! Dieu!_"
Words, tone, appearance, moved the son intensely; for never before had
man beheld Michael Gregoriev show such stress of emotion. Never had any
hour so clearly revealed the ravages of mad living and secret
unhappiness.
True, the fierce eyes could flash as of old; the voice would presently
once more ring harsh and servant and equal alike would cringe before
him; for still he held half Moscow in the iron grip of his terrible
omniscience. But Ivan noted the color of his hair--that dead white that
is not the snow of years but the ashen colorlessness borne of continuous
nervous strain. And there was the unexpected stoop of the powerful
shoulders, the occasional unavoidable trembling of the hands, and in
his face, which repeated the livid tone of the hair, were graven lines,
many and deep, born of the repressed disappointment and increasing
loneliness that had insensibly humanized the harsh visage. To the eyes
of the son, looking on his father for the first time in years, there lay
on face and figure, everywhere, the marks of that dread instrument which
no member of the Third Section can put away or destroy: the evidences of
relentless _experience_.
Eye to eye they faced each other, father and son. One minute
passed.--Two.--Three. Never before had Ivan felt himself a thing of
evil. But under those terrible eyes, that had searched hearts as others
searched printed texts for interlinear meanings, he began to feel
himself drawn into the wild waters between a Scylla of shame and a
Charybdis of terror. Alas! Would this man believe his wretched tale of
the trickery of others; of wanton, stubborn stupidity on the part of
himself?
The first, hot wave of mortification had not passed when Prince Michael
suddenly straightened, and lifted his head. His two hands were fast
clinched; but their trembling was still plainly visible. He seemed, for
an instant, about to break into one of his old torrents of abuse; but
suddenly, with an effort, he restrained himself, paused, and then said,
slowly:
"I have been misinformed. I did not know you had entered the
university."
"I have not. I am the second Professor of harmony and orchestration in
the new Conservatoire of Music."
"Then, by God, what are you--" The words were shot out by a furious
impulse, and as suddenly ceased. Again a pause, and Michael began,
quietly: "What have you been arrested for, then? How did you get into
that nest of murderers: the brains and the soul of anarchy in central
Russia:--especially the creature Petrovitch, or Lihnoff?"
Ivan gave a weary sigh. "Because I have been an unspeakable fool:
because I was tired; and had been working long, and hard. I chose some
new companions;--and now I find I entertained assassins unawares."
At this, the reflected gleam of a smile flickered across Michael's face.
His hands relaxed. "Tell me the story--all of it," he said. Nor would
the prisoners waiting for their comrade, nor yet the guards that
attended them, have believed their ears could they have heard the tone
of the tyrant's voice.
Without preface, and without apology, Ivan began his story, which he
told baldly, with harsh stress upon his own deliberate folly. Only one
omission did he make: and that was one demanded of him by the past.
Irina's name never appeared in the narrative; and, as he went on, the
hope that she might be successfully shielded throughout, grew large
within him. Again, however, he underrated the man to whom he spoke. He
had finished, and silence had reigned for perhaps ten seconds, when
Gregoriev said, a little impatiently:
"But the woman!--Lihnoff's sister, Irina, who has managed to get away
from my fools for the moment? Where is she, Ivan? You owe her one turn
for dragging you into your disgrace six years ago. Give me the
information, and--you shall go."
Ivan's lip curled. "Spy's wages!--I am no informer," he jerked out, his
heart sinking within him, nevertheless.
Gregoriev leaped to his feet in fury. Almost as quickly he was back in
his chair again. This conflict to retain his temper was so new to him
and his repeated outbreaks were so characteristic, that one might have
laughed had the situation been different. However, when he spoke again,
Michael's voice was quiet enough, though touched with irony:
"So--actually--you are in love with her still!"
"Neither now nor ever," Ivan answered, steady-eyed.
Michael, inwardly relieved, shrugged. "Where is she, Ivan?"
"Thank God, I don't know!"
"_Why_ don't you know?"
"Burevsky was shot with the name of the place on his lips--unspoken."
Michael's brows were drawn and frowning. "You swear ignorance?" he
demanded.
"So help me God."
"Humph!--Well, well,--it merely delays the affair a day or two. She's
known in every town in the Moscow district, and in every big city from
Odessa to Petersburg by this time.--Frontiers all waiting for her."
"Father!"
At the sudden title, Michael trembled. "What is it?"
"Father, it is that I want Irina's pardon.--Listen! Sergius Lihnoff has
been her undoing. Freed from his fanaticism, his fascination, she will
be as dangerous as a baby.--She always hated the treachery.--Before that
supper she even begged me to give it up, or to postpone it to Sunday--a
day when Ternoff wouldn't leave the offices at his hour.--I am willing
to give myself as guarantee for her. If ever again she involves herself
in a plot, I will come here and surrender."
He was interrupted by his father's harsh laugh. "Useful act!" he said.
Ivan flushed, but nevertheless repeated, steadily:
"Give her her pardon!--I've not asked much of you in my life. Do this
thing for me.--I won't want another."
Gregoriev frowned, but seemed to ponder the question. Finally, leaning
across the table, he growled: "Don't you know that never, in my life as
a Russian official, have I done such a thing as you ask? In all the
years of my service, a criminal hunted has been a criminal sentenced."
"And now I ask you to prove your rule by this one exception.--I swear
to you that the only person Irina is dangerous to, is--herself."
There ended Ivan's fight for the girl. The rest of the struggle, and it
was a fierce one, passed silently within his father's breast. Ten
unbearable minutes, and then, Michael raised his hand.
* * * * *
That conference with the last of the four prisoners, ended in one of the
profoundest sensations ever experienced by Prince Michael's entourage.
For the young man, a Nihilist "political" of the type the Chief hated
with a hatred undying, emerged from the cabinet alone, unguarded,
bearing a pass of complete freedom, signed, "Michael." Two of the men,
examining it, rushed back to the inner cabinet to discover if their
Chief had been foully murdered, as he had so often been warned would
happen when he persisted in interviewing, unattended, desperadoes of the
lowest class. But to-night the Prince was not only alive, but also, Ossa
upon Pelion, in a good humor!
The guards in-doors had by no means finished gaping over this fact, when
one of the soldiers who, on examination nights, stood at the outer gate,
came hurrying in with a fresh item. The freed "political," so evidently
under the special protection of all the saints, had paused as he reached
the bottom of the entrance stairs of the palace, and burst into a fit of
uncontrollable, hysterical laughter.