On the day of Eva’s last appearance in Petrograd, a well laid high
explosive mine blew up the central building of the Agricultural
Exposition.
The plot had been aimed at the person of the Grand Duke. His visit had
been expected, the order in which he would inspect the buildings had
been carefully mapped out. A slight maladjustment in the machinery of
his car delayed him and his train a few minutes beyond the precisely
fixed hour.
At the very moment when he put his foot on the first step of the
building, a terrific crash resounded. The sky disappeared behind
fume and fragments. Several manufacturers and bureaucrats, who had
officiously hurried ahead, as well as ten or twelve workingmen, were
killed. The air pressure smashed the window panes in all the houses
within a mile of the spot.
For a while the Grand Duke stood quite still. Without curiosity
or fear, but with an indescribably sombre look, he surveyed the
devastation. When he turned to go, the great crowds who had streamed
thither melted back silently at his approach. They left him a broad
path through which his abnormally long legs, accompanied by the
clinking of his sword, strode with the steps of a sower.
For her final performance Eva had selected the rôle of the fettered
and then liberated Echo, in the pantomime called The Awakening of Pan.
It had always created enthusiasm; but this time she celebrated an
unparalleled triumph.
She danced a dance of freedom and redemption, that affected with
complete immediacy the nerves of the thronging audiences, and released
the tensions of the day of their lives. There was a present and
significant eloquence in the barbaric defiance, the fiery terror of the
pursued. Then came her sudden rallying, her heroic determination, her
grief over a first defeat, her toying with the torch of vengeance, her
jubilant welcome of a rising dawn.
The curtain dropped, and the twenty-five hundred people sat as though
turned to stone. Innumerable glances sought the box of the Grand Duke
and found those slothful, unseeing eyes of his. They saw the slightness
and disproportionate length of his body, the sinewy, bird-like neck
above the round collar of his uniform, the thin beard, the bumpy
forehead, and felt the atmosphere that rolled silently out from him and
dwelled in his track--the atmosphere of a million-atomed death. And in
the midst of these were those slothful eyes.
Then the applause broke out. Distinguished ladies contorted their
bodies, toothless old men yelled like boys, sophisticated experts of
the theatre climbed on their seats and waved. When Eva appeared the
noise died down. For ten seconds nothing was heard but the sound of
breathing and the rustle of garments.
She looked into that gleaming sea of faces. The folds of her white
Greek garment were still as marble. Then the storm of applause burst
out anew. Over the balustrade of the gallery a girl bent and stretched
out her arms, and cried with a sob in her voice, that rose above all
the plaudits: “You have understood us, little soul!”
Eva did not understand the Russian words. But it was not necessary. She
looked up, and their sense was clear to her.