Chapter XXX (3)

“God forbid!” said Ivan. “The Jews are a nice people. We live with them in peace; but everything may happen. Sometimes an orthodox Russian is worse than a Jew. But the Jews were much offended by the last Pogrom, and they have been giving false evidence, and attributing to many people crimes which they had not committed.”

“When was the last Pogrom?” asked the Countess.

“It was in the spring,” said Ivan, “when your Brightness was away.”

“And did they kill the Jews?” asked the Count.

“God forbid!” Ivan answered. “They sinned a little, and they destroyed some of the Jews’ property, but murder--God forbid! they were innocent of that!”

“But who is going to do this?” asked the Count.

“They will come from various places,” said Ivan. “They will come by the night train from O. and A. They will arrive in the morning; there will be a Pogrom, and they will go away.”

“But who?” asked the Count.

“Those who are sent,” said Ivan.

“But who is sending them?” repeated the Count.

“I cannot know,” said Ivan.

“How do you know this is so?” asked the Countess.

“Everybody knows it,” said Ivan--“all the morning carts have been arriving from all the neighbouring villages just as when there is a fair.”

“What for?” asked the Countess.

“To take away all that is left after the Pogrom,” said Ivan. “It is advantageous for the peasants to get the property of the Jews and to pay nothing at all for it.”

“It must be prevented,” said the Count.

Ivan smiled, and merely repeated that there would be a Pogrom on the following day, for so it had been arranged, and nothing more could be got out of him.

The Count went and interviewed the local police sergeant and spoke seriously to him about the matter. The police sergeant shrugged his shoulders and wrung his hands, and said that he could do nothing; what was his authority in the place? What could he and two policemen do against the populace? “If there is to be a Pogrom there will be a Pogrom,” he said. “We can do nothing. We should only be killed too. There is nothing to be done.”

All day long Jews from the village who knew the Count and the Countess came to their house, bringing with them furniture and goods of every description, till the whole stables were filled with them, and all day long large creaking carts drove slowly into the village from the neighbouring villages, bringing the peasants who had come to bear off the booty when the Pogrom should be over. And they met and conversed with the Jews in the friendliest manner possible, discussing the Pogrom merely as an event of not very considerable importance, but as a fact, such as an eclipse or a feast day, about which there could be no possible doubt, and no possible change.

The Countess had a further interview with Sasha, the cook, a peasant woman who was also a native of the place; but she, like Ivan, merely repeated over and over again that the Pogrom was fixed for the morrow, and that it would be executed by people sent for the purpose, who would come by train from the various big towns.

The Count went once more to the police sergeant, and told him to take some steps; he replied that he would do his best, but that he was a married man, and the Count must have pity on him, that there were no steps to be taken--that he could do nothing--that nothing could be done--that nobody could do anything!

The next morning, as soon as the Countess awoke, Sasha the cook came into her room and said--

“There will be no Pogrom: it has been put off!”

THE ANTICHRIST

In the village of X., which is in the government of O., in Central Russia, there were two men: one was called Michael and the other was called Andrew. They were both deeply religious and concerned with the things of a world which is not this world. They spent days and nights in reading the Scriptures and in pondering over the meaning of difficult texts. They had both resolved in their early youth never to marry, for they considered that the human race had something so radically bad about it that the sooner it came to an end the better. They decided, therefore, that it was their duty not to prolong its existence. But when they attained to early manhood the parents of Andrew contracted an alliance for him, and he was wedded to a girl named Masha. Their union was not blessed with offspring, and Michael, who continued to lead a solitary life, with rigorous fasting and uninterrupted meditation, said such was the will of Providence. The young wife of Andrew did not share the views of the mystic, and she yearned to be the mother of a child. Unbeknown to her husband, she sought one night the Wise Woman of the village, who was skilled in finding lost objects, and who was versed in the properties of herbs, and knew the words of power which cured the sick of dreadful disease.

Masha sought the Wise Woman in the night, and told her her trouble. The Wise Woman lit a candle, muttered a brief saying in which the name of King David was mentioned, and that of a darker Prince. She gave her a small green herb, telling her to eat it on the first moonless night in June, and that her wish would be fulfilled.

Masha obeyed the Wise Woman’s behest. A year passed by and the wish of her heart was granted. A son was born to her. And Masha and Andrew greatly rejoiced over this. But when Michael heard of it his spirit was troubled. He consulted the Scriptures, and the meaning of the event became clear to him. He sought Andrew and said to him--

“This is the work of Satan. You have dabbled in black magic, and you are in danger of eternal perdition. Moreover, the truth has been revealed to me--the child which has been born to you is none other than the Antichrist, of which the Book of Revelation tells. And that is why our poor country is distressful, seething with trouble, sedition, and revolt, and why our Sovereign is vexed, and why evil days have fallen upon Russia, our Mother. We must slay the Antichrist, and immediately the dark cloud will be lifted from our land, and peace and prosperity shall come to us once more.”

That night Michael convoked Andrew and Masha to his house. It was a small, one-storeyed, wooden cottage, thatched with straw. It was swept and clean, and in one corner of the room were many glittering images of the Queen of Heaven and the Saints, before which burned small red lights; and besides this Michael had erected a shrine on which more than a dozen thin waxen tapers were burning. Michael convoked Andrew and his wife to his house, and the elders of the village also, and they spent an hour in chanting and in prayer, each holding a candle in his hand, but to the priest he said no word of this matter, for he did not trust him nor believe him to be possessed of celestial grace. After they had prayed for an hour, Michael said to Masha--

“Go home and fetch your child.”

Masha obeyed, and returned presently, bearing the infant for whose advent she had so sorely longed, and which in coming had been the cause of such joy to her. Michael took the infant and said--

“In the body of this child is the power of Satan: in the body of this child is the Antichrist of whom the Scriptures tell--this is the cause of the misfortunes which have visited our dear country, and vexed the spirit of our Lord and Sovereign.”

He then extinguished all the lights and the tapers in the room: it was pitch dark, and no sound was heard save the muttering of Michael’s continuous prayer. Masha trembled, for she was afraid. Michael took the infant. It lay quite still, for it was asleep.

And as Michael took the infant he said: “We must exorcise the spirit and slay the Antichrist, who has been born in this child to be the bane of Russia and to vex the heart of our Sovereign!”

And Michael bade the people who were gathered together in the room--there were five men, the eldest in the village, and seven women--be prepared for the great event, and he lifted his voice, and in a wailing whisper he addressed the Evil Spirit.

“Evil Spirit,” he said, “Antichrist, of whom the Holy Scriptures tell, through the dark dealings of our brother Andrew and his wife, who have trafficked with Satan, thou hast found a way into the body of this child, but it is written that the troubles of Russia and of our Sovereign shall be at their thickest at thy advent, but shall diminish and pass away with thy disappearance. Evil Spirit, I conjure thee, leave the body of this child.”

Then the infant cried plaintively, twice.

“Hark!” said Michael, in a solemn voice, “the spirit of the Antichrist is speaking. Hark to the cry of Satan, who is leaving the body of the child. Pray, pray with all your might, and help me to slay the Antichrist.”

And fear came upon everybody, nor durst they utter in the stillness, but their spirits were spellbound and seemed to be drawn, tense and taut as stretched wires, in that effort of prayer for the passing of the spirit of Satan and for the slaying of the Antichrist.

The infant cried once again--and then it cried no more!...

“The Antichrist has been slain,” said Michael, and a deeper stillness came on the assembly. “The Antichrist,” said Michael, “must be buried.” And he walked out of his cottage into the yard where in a shed his horse and cart were kept. He unloosed his horse and said: “Whither the horse shall lead, thither must we follow.”

The horse trotted slowly down the deserted street. That night there was neither moon nor stars in the sky. Beyond the village was a marshy plain. It was just before dawn, and in the thick velvet darkness of the sky there was a glow as of a living sapphire. They reached the marsh, and there the horse stopped, and began to browse.

“It is here that the Antichrist must be buried,” said Michael. And they buried the infant by the reedy marsh. And all this time neither Andrew nor Masha, nor the elders, nor the women who were there, spoke a single word; and when they had finished burying the infant a breeze came from the east, and the dawn, grey and chilly, trembled over the horizon, and the wild ducks rose from the marsh, uttered their cry, and flew away into distance, seeking the fields.

The spell that had kept this assembly mute and speechless vanished with the vanishing darkness. The noises of life began: the creaking of carts was heard from the village, and the cocks were crowing.

Andrew and Masha looked at each other, and a great fear came upon them, and indeed upon all the assembly, for what they had done. They did not speak, but returned severally to their homes; and Masha, when she reached her home, too frightened to cry or even to speak, sat motionless before the swinging cradle which hung from the roof of her cottage, and which was now empty. And Andrew durst not look at her. Presently he left the house and sought the dwelling of the priest. The priest let him in, and there he found Michael, who, likewise overcome with terror and misgivings as to what had been done, had come to tell the story.

The priest reported the whole matter to the local policeman, who in his turn reported it to the police captain of the district, and three days afterwards Michael, Andrew, Masha, and the others were locked up in the prison of a neighbouring town, and a day after their arrest an old woman of the village sought out the police captain and asked to see him.

“I was present,” she said to him, “at the slaying of the Antichrist. I held the candle in my hands myself when the evil spirit was exorcised, and the cause of all Russia’s trouble was destroyed. They say the Tsar has given money to the others for having destroyed his enemy; and I, who am poor and old, and who was there also, have received nothing. Let me receive my due. Give me the money that the Tsar owes me, for I also helped to slay the Antichrist.”

This story is true. It happened last September, and was recorded in the newspapers, with many more details than I have told. And at the station of Kozlov, as I have already related, in the government of Tambov, between the hours of midnight and 2 a.m., a railway guard told it to myself and a newsvendor, and when he had finished telling it he sighed and bewailed the blindness of his fellow-creatures, the peasants of Russian villages, who, as he wisely said, had so much kindness in their hearts, but were often led through their ignorance to do dreadful deeds.

“DIRGE IN MARRIAGE”

The following story was told me by a doctor. It happened in the village in the government of Tambov. There was a peasant called Vichareff who had three daughters; one of them was called Anoushka, one Douniasha, and the third Natasha. Their father was well off, but extraordinarily close-fisted; his thirst for land and his ambition to accumulate were unlimited. He arranged an advantageous match for his eldest daughter, Douniasha, and was exerting all his wits to find a husband for his younger daughter who should be equally well-to-do, so that the two weddings might take place on the same day, and thereby save him trouble and expense. His third daughter was considered to be too young as yet to marry.

Now Anoushka repeated over and over again, not without tears, that she did not wish to be married; but her father and her mother (whose will, always feeble, had now completely ceased to work, owing to years of unceasing compliance with the views and the wishes of her domineering husband) paid no attention to this.

At last Vichareff succeeded in striking a bargain with one of his neighbours named Kroustalieff, the purport of which was that Kroustalieff’s son, Dimitri, should marry Anoushka, in return for which Vichareff promised to get him some horses at an unusually low price, since Vichareff was a horse-dealer on a small scale. The bargain was struck, and the matter was arranged, and Anoushka was told that she was to marry Dimitri. Dimitri was a young man aged eighteen, nice-looking, and not unintelligent; notwithstanding this, when Anoushka was informed of the matter, she burst into a storm of tears, and declared no power on earth could induce her to marry him. Her father and mother, however, took no notice of her tears and her protest, and invited their friends to an evening party to celebrate the engagement. Now the reason Anoushka was determined not to marry Dimitri, was that she loved her sister’s affianced husband, Ivan. He, for his part, was quite unaware of this, and indeed nobody knew of it in the whole village except an old man, Alexis by name, who was said to be versed in astrology and whom the peasants often consulted in matters which concerned the other world. Anoushka went to Alexis and told him her story; he promised to cast her horoscope and to see what could be done, and he bade her return to him in a few days. She did so. When Alexis saw her he shook his head.

“There is nothing to be done, child,” he said, “the stars are against you: you must wed Dimitri; but no good will come of it, neither to you nor to him.”

Then Anoushka asked him if he could not give her a love philtre or a charm, which would make Ivan love her.

“I can give you a charm,” said Alexis, “and I can give you love philtres, but I cannot turn the stars from their courses, nor prevent you wedding Dimitri in the church, although no good shall come of it, either to you or to him. There is nothing to be done, save to obey; this matter is the business of Providence.”

And so Anoushka went home, taking neither philtre nor charm, and spent the whole day weeping at her work, but her parents did not even trouble to scold her, so surely did they know that their will would be accomplished. And in the evenings Ivan and Dimitri would come to their cottage and sing and play on the Balalaika; and while Douniasha and Ivan looked at each other with love, and spoke in whispers of a thousand nothings, like two happy birds twittering in a tree, Anoushka said no word to Dimitri, although he was gentle with her and civil-spoken; and he attributed her silence and her gloomy look to bashfulness and modesty.

When the evening of Vichareff’s party arrived, the whole village came to his house. And some of the gentry from the landowner’s house came to look on at the dancing. The small room of Vichareff’s cottage was crowded to overflowing, a little space being left in the centre for the dancers. Outside the cottage there were more people, those for whom there was no room inside, and they crowded round the door and windows, straining and craning their necks to get a glimpse of the festivity. Those who were at the window, finding that the window-panes got in their way, broke the glass and put their heads through the empty sash. Inside, some one was playing on a large concertina, and the dancers walked up and down the room with faces of grave and solemn indifference, performing the necessary steps and singing the usual chant. The couples paced to and fro opposite each other, and at the end of every verse of the chanted music, each girl was kissed by her partner.

When this dance was over sunflower seeds were handed round on a plate to the guests, and glasses of tea were brought for the gentry; then a soldier who was home on leave, performed a solo in the centre of the room, dancing and stamping according to intricate rule, until he could no more.

Douniasha looked radiantly happy; she was dressed in pale green, and wore a necklace of bright beads; but Anoushka, in her pink silk finery, looked as white as a ghost, and said no word during the whole evening. And when Dimitri danced with her and kissed her, she seemed no more to notice him than if he had been a phantom.

They danced all night, but never once during all those hours of mirth and gaiety, did Anoushka smile.

Three weeks later preparations were made for the wedding. Vichareff bought provisions; the wedding was to be a magnificent one. The landowner lent his horses, and Anoushka and Douniasha were to be driven to the church in two troikas. Dimitri had a new salmon-pink shirt for the occasion, and in his high boots there was an unusual number of creases; he appeared with pride to show himself to Anoushka, but she took no notice of him. On her wedding day she was paler than ever, and her eyes were red with crying. Dimitri asked her if anything was the matter with her and whether she was not feeling well; but she said that she was perfectly well. So he attributed her strange appearance and ways to the inscrutable habits of womankind, and asked no further questions. But, shortly before the wedding pairs were to leave for the church, Anoushka went to her mother and said that she could not marry Dimitri. Her mother said that she supposed the child had another sweetheart; such was the way of girls. But if she had, it was of no consequence, she said; she would soon forget him. In any case she was to marry Dimitri, and that immediately.

Then Anoushka broke into a passion of weeping, and begged and implored her mother not to let her marry Dimitri; and her mother lost patience, and said she deserved to be beaten; that she never heard such nonsense in her life.

“Now stop that crying,” she ended by saying, “or I will call your father, and he shall put an end to this nonsense!”

Then Anoushka dried her tears and said: “Very well, since it is so, let it be so. But I will never be Dimitri’s wife!”

Then the troikas drove up to the cottage door, their bells jangling and tinkling, and the bridal couples all in their best clothes were driven off at a canter to the church, and the wedding took place. And Anoushka and Douniasha were crowned with gold crowns, and walked round the altar (which was placed in the centre of the church with a tall candle on it) in memory of David dancing round the Ark, according to the rite of the Orthodox Church. After the ceremony was over, they drove home once more and the feasting, which had already lasted one day, began again. The two bridegrooms were taken by their friends through the village, stopping at nearly every cottage to have their healths drunk, and to join in the toasts, while crowds of children followed them, some of them beating small tom-toms and scrambling every fifty yards or so for sugar, which was thrown to them in handfuls by the bridegrooms and their friends.

Towards the evening the bridegrooms were fairly intoxicated, although they could both walk quite straight and speak without difficulty. In Vichareff’s house an uproarious feast ended in general music and dancing, which took place on the green in front of the cottage. In the yard behind the house a special chamber, like a tent, had been made for Anoushka, hung with pieces of striped linen. The dancing company ultimately moved from Vichareff’s house and visited various parts of the village, settling now here and now there, and gaining fresh liveliness and zest at each place where it settled. Anoushka was left alone, and shortly afterwards Dimitri returned. He went into the cottage and saw that it was empty. He then went into the yard and into the tent which had been prepared; and glimmering in the darkness he saw the tall white figure of Anoushka standing up. He called to her, but she did not answer. Being half-intoxicated he could not see clearly, and he was not sure whether it was in reality Anoushka or not that he seemed to see. He called once more, as loudly as he could, and, receiving no answer, he walked up to her and grasped her by the arm, and as he did so her whole body swung backwards and forwards as though it were dancing on air. Then in a moment he grew sober, for he realised that Anoushka had hanged herself, and he went and shouted for the neighbours. The body was cut down, and efforts were made to restore her to life, but she had already been dead about an hour, and there was nothing more to be done.

The next day Dimitri’s father and Vichareff held a consultation; Vichareff even said that he considered his bargain cancelled, and Dimitri’s father, after a great deal of argument, refused to admit that this was so. Ultimately Vichareff’s cunning mind found a way out of the matter. “Why should not Dimitri,” he said, “marry Natasha my third daughter? It is true she is only fifteen, but she is a good strong girl, and will make him a good wife. And then,” he added, “we can have the wedding at once, so that the food shall not be wasted, and we shall thus be spared the burden and expense of two weddings.”

So this was arranged, and the priest was informed of it. But the priest declined to celebrate the wedding, and said that such a proceeding was unchristian and inhuman; they must be married, he said, after a decent interval of time had elapsed.

Vichareff and Dimitri’s father were forced to comply, for public opinion in the village was entirely on the side of the priest; but the wedding food, so far from being wasted, did double service all the same, for it served to satisfy the guests who thronged to Anoushka’s funeral; so that in these days in the village there was both dirge in marriage and mirth in funeral.

THE GOVERNOR’S NIECE

Irina Andreevna T---- was a fair-haired, blue-eyed girl aged twenty-two. She went to lectures at the St. Petersburg University in the daytime; in the evening she went to balls and parties. Irina was an orphan, but she lived with an aunt of hers in a large house in St. Petersburg, where on Thursday evenings there was always a considerable gathering of girls and young men, officers chiefly.

When the war broke out in 1904, Irina spent all the days at the hospital, learning to tend the sick and the wounded, and making bandages and clothes for the soldiers at the war. In 1905, when peace was declared, and followed by tumultuous events, she was deeply infected by the atmosphere of excitement which prevailed everywhere, the wild hopes and the great expectations. She went to public meetings and attended private discussions--the private discussions of small groups of students, men and women, which took place in private houses. All the people who attended these informal meetings belonged, as far as their political opinions were concerned, to the Extreme Left. Some of them called themselves Social Democrats, others Social Revolutionaries. Irina’s special friend belonged to the extremer shade of the latter party. Irina’s nature was enthusiastic; she hated compromise. She wanted all or nothing. Violent means such as terrorism or assassination seemed to her of no account where the cause was great and the end noble.

As the months went on, she became more and more closely bound to the more ardent spirits among the Social Revolutionaries, and they regarded her as one of their most inspiring leaders. But she continued during all this time to live the ordinary life of the St. Petersburg society, to talk and dance with the young officers at evening parties, and go to the opera, and to take part in sledging and ski-ing parties. Neither her relations nor any of her ordinary acquaintances suspected the intensity of the inner life that was going on within her. They knew she was interested in politics, but so was everybody else. Her friends chaffed her for being what they called “red”; but then a great many people were red.

In February 1906, her uncle, General Steinberg, a brother of her deceased father, was appointed to the Governorship of O., a large manufacturing city. It was just at this time that she joined the branch of the Social Revolutionaries which called themselves Maximalists, and whose business it was to remove by violence the persons whom they considered to be obstacles in the way of their cause. These people, when they had decided that some one should be removed, drew lots among themselves as to who should accomplish the deed of destruction.

It so happened that, in February 1906, the Executive Committee of the Maximalists condemned General Steinberg to death for suppressing certain riots in the town of O., during which affray a certain number of workmen had been killed and wounded. Lots were drawn as to who should kill General Steinberg--and the lot fell to Irina, his niece. She received the decision with calm, and made preparations for leaving St. Petersburg. She told her aunt she was going to Moscow to stay with some intimate friends of the family: from Moscow it is but a short distance to O. Her relations saw her off at the station, also a young man in the regiment of the Chevalier-Gardes, who was particularly devoted to her. She seemed in excellent spirits.

When she arrived at Moscow she went straight to O., and stayed at the hotel, from whence she wrote a letter to her uncle saying that she was on her way to the estate of her St. Petersburg relations, which was a night’s journey from O. Everything was made easy for her, for the next morning she received a letter from him asking her to come to luncheon at half-past twelve.

The next morning at the appointed time she started off in a sledge to the Governor’s house, wrapped in a fur _shuba_, and in her muff was concealed a small dynamite bomb capable of enormous destruction.

Her uncle greeted her with the utmost simplicity and affection. He was a short, grey-haired man between fifty and sixty, with a thick grey moustache and kind blue eyes. He was a widower and had no children. He took her into his sitting-room.

“My dear little Irina,” he said, kissing her on both cheeks, “it is years since I’ve seen you; I should not have recognised you, you’ve grown into such a lovely grown-up creature. It is lucky that I have been appointed here, just on your way to X. (the country estate of Irina’s relations), but why did you go to the hotel? Another time you must stay here. And mind, I expect to see you often now; you must stop here every time you go to X. There is always plenty of room in this old barrack of a house. But come, we will go and have something to eat.” And he took her into the dining-room. “We shall be quite alone,” he said. “It is better, isn’t it? When you were a little girl, when we were all at X. together, you used to love pancakes; you never could have enough; so I’ve had some made to-day. And my cook understands how to make them properly.”

Irina blurted out a few confused phrases. Her uncle could not get over the fact that she was grown up; that she was a tall and pretty girl. He took her to the window to observe her properly, and he kept on making exclamations of admiration and surprise. Then he led her to the sideboard, and chose out for her titbits among the hot and cold _zakouski_ (hors-d’oeuvre) that were there.

“It does one good,” he said, “to see a face like yours in this detestable hole. I can’t tell you what a life it is. One never has a moment’s peace, and nobody is satisfied. There are fifteen or sixteen different parties in the town, all quarrelling. I have to settle everything. There are Revolutionaries, Social Democrats, Social Revolutionaries, Maximalists, Minimalists, merchants, students, Jews, anti-Jews, Reactionaries, the Alliance of the Russian People--all fighting against each other, and all appealing to me to settle their difficulties; and if one does manage to keep things smooth, what thanks does one get from the Government? Absolutely none. The other day all the Reactionaries, the Alliance of the Russian People, and so forth, met together and sang the National Hymn and collected a crowd of hooligans, and went to set fire to the school. I had to go down and make a speech to them, and it was with the greatest difficulty I got them away.

“Then the other day there was a man called Savin, who was arrested for making revolutionary propaganda among the troops. He sent and appealed to me to be allowed to go and see his son, who, he said, was dying of scarlet fever. I gave him permission, and it turned out that the son had not got scarlet fever at all; that the whole thing was a pretext; and he took advantage of the occasion to shoot a policeman and to get away. The result of this is that the Reactionaries here say I am a Revolutionary, and, of course, the Revolutionaries say I’m a satrap and a brutal oppressor, and all the rest of it. But it doesn’t matter what one does, it is impossible to satisfy any one. And every day I receive threatening letters from both sides: letters from people telling me I am a traitor to my country, that I am sold to the Jews and in league with England and all the Continental finance; and others saying that I am an executioner, and the enemy of freedom and of light. However, why should I bore you with all these stories? Let’s talk of more cheerful things.”

They sat down at the table.

“Here are the pancakes,” he said. “The country is turned upside down, but we have to go on eating pancakes just the same, don’t we? The best thing is not to think at all in times like this.”

Irina looked at him and smiled; she found it difficult to speak. But he did not give her much opportunity, for he went on gaily, talking first about one thing, then about another--of the coming elections, of the plays that were being acted in St. Petersburg and Moscow, of the modern literature and its hysterical tendencies; and he told many amusing anecdotes illustrating the strange anomalies and the curious ideas that were rife in the present condition of things.

When they had finished eating, he said: “Now, you must come into my own sitting-room, where no one is allowed to disturb me, and I will have at least a half-hour of human intercourse before I go back to my convict’s existence; because, you know, my dear, a Governor’s life is worse than a convict’s. At least, a convict does not have to make up his mind twenty hundred times a day about questions which cannot be solved at all.”

He led her into his sitting-room, which was as simply furnished as possible: it contained a large writing-table and a low divan; the carpets had holes in them; there was a gramophone and a small piano.

“That gramophone,” he said, “is my one consolation. When I am tired I turn it on and listen to gipsy songs and to Caruso.” He hummed a tune from an Italian opera. “It’s a beautiful gramophone; you must hear it,” and he fixed a Caruso record on it which sang a song from _Cavalleria Rusticana_. When this was over he talked on for about twenty minutes, of the memories of his youth, of his travels, and many trifling episodes concerning their common relations and acquaintances. Presently he looked at his watch. “My time is really up,” he said, “and now I want to talk to you seriously. You know, Irina, I am alone in the world, and you have got no parents either; so that in a kind of way I look upon myself as your father, and I want you to treat me like a father. I want you to come here whenever you like and to confide in me if ever you have anything that troubles you in any way. And I will always be ready to do anything I can for you; because, you know, little Irina, I am very, very fond of you. And now, I’m afraid my time is up, and I must go back to my work.”

He kissed her on both cheeks, and made the sign of the cross on her face. “God bless you,” he said.

Irina left the house, and the General rang for his aide-de-camp and settled down to his work.

Ten minutes later a loud explosion was heard in the street where the hotel was situated at which Irina had stopped. She had thrown her bomb, but the street was empty at the time, and she had killed no one save herself.

A POLICE OFFICER

It was the fourth day of the armed rising in Moscow. Early in the morning some of the shops had opened, especially the tobacconists, and there had been a certain amount of movement in the streets; but later on, towards noon, a stillness had again descended on the city. From the centre of the town came the noise of artillery, and in the side streets one heard a ceaseless clicking of firing, though one could not tell whence it came or where it was going on.

At half-past six in the evening, when Alexander Petrovitch Pavlov, a police officer, went home to dinner, all the city seemed empty, quiet and deserted, yet at the same time full of an intermittent, unwonted noise. He went down the Square from the Governor’s house where he had had business, past the Hotel Dresden, and stopped to say a few words to the policeman there on duty. The policeman, in reply to some question he had vaguely asked (for Alexander Petrovitch was tired, sick of the whole business and discouraged by what seemed to him to be a tissue of absurdities), said: “They are fools, little fools--nothing will come of it.” He did not pay much attention to this; he was thinking how absurd the whole matter was, and what a nuisance these abnormal upheavings were when they were prolonged.

Alexander Petrovitch was a man about forty years of age. He had been an officer in an infantry regiment and had once been a man of considerable means, but he had lost all his money quite suddenly playing cards. He had been fond of adventure, and had even taken part in foreign wars in Cuba, in Greece, and in China. Then he married. He did this as he had done everything else, suddenly and impulsively. He married the daughter of a landowner whom he met in a provincial town, and he married her after three days’ acquaintance. His wife was good-looking and prided herself on her European culture; she spoke French and English. They had two children. It was after his marriage that he had lost his money, and shortly before the war. When the war broke out he went to Manchuria. He was wounded at the battle of Mukden and promoted to be a captain; he also received two orders. After Mukden he was invalided home and some influential person who had met him in the Far East obtained for him a place in the police at Moscow, for which he received good pay. He was what is called in Russian a “Pristav”; that is to say, the police officer of a town district. His wife considered that this position was an inferior one; she was humiliated by it. She also considered her husband to be beneath her in social rank (which was in reality absurd) and she constantly reminded him of the fact. Alexander Petrovitch was quick-witted, good-natured, impulsive, but hopelessly incapable of any prolonged effort or any sort of concentration or fixity of purpose. His mind continually went off at a tangent, and as a Russian proverb says, “there was no Tsar in his head.”

When the Manifesto of the 17th of October had been published he had greeted it with enthusiasm, and had taken part in the processions which had filled the streets that day, and the crowds that sang the “Marseillaise” and “God Save the Emperor,” alternately, and displayed together the red and the National flag. But now he was discouraged. His innate scepticism and his pessimism which every now and then gave way to fitful outbursts of enthusiasm, had once more got the upper hand, and he muttered as he walked home through the snowy streets on that grey evening: “What a beastly state of things! What a beastly state of things!”

When he got home he saw at a glance that his wife was not in the best of tempers.

“Late as usual!” she said. “The soup’s been standing twenty minutes and it’s quite cold.”

“I’m very sorry,” he said; “I was kept at the Governor’s.” He sat down to the table on which there were a few sardines in a broken saucer, a little stale pickled caviare which had got hard and slightly grey, and some slices of sausage no longer fresh. He gulped down three small glasses of vodka.

“What about Ermolov?” asked his wife.

“He has been arrested,” said Alexander Petrovitch. “He will be examined by the doctors.”

“What nonsense!” said his wife, “why should he be examined? Why should he be arrested? I think he ought to be rewarded. They don’t care who they kill; they shoot policemen round the corner; they profit by the red cross uniform to kill the police; they were shooting from some of the churches to-day.”

Ermolov was a high police official who had walked into a doctor’s house the day before and had shot him with a pistol for no reason at all.

Alexander Petrovitch shrugged his shoulders. “It’s the Government’s fault,” he said. “There is no order and no law anywhere. Protection is everything. What does it matter what the Revolutionaries do? That has nothing to do with the question. If an officer breaks the law he ought to be punished. He won’t be punished because he’s got protection. Besides which, Ermolov is not a normal man: he is mad, quite mad.”

“What I say is,” said his wife, “that men who pretend to be doctors and use the protection of the red cross badges to shoot innocent policemen in the streets, ought to be shot in the street at sight.”

“The whole thing is absurd!” said Alexander Petrovitch.

“What did I tell you?” said his wife; “I told you so from the very first when the Manifesto was published. I said that nothing would come of it, and that it was a mistake. What do we want with a Constitution in Russia? It is all the Jews--all this chaos is the work of the Jews. And look what is happening now. One cannot even go out into the streets for fear of being shot. They killed the Schwetzar (the hall porter) next door this morning; he had been sent on a message.”

“If people would stay at home and mind their own business,” said Alexander Petrovitch, “they would be quite safe. All day long I have been pestered by people who want to pass here and want to pass there; and they know quite well they can’t. And it’s no good telling them ‘Don’t go there, it’s dangerous; don’t go there, you’ll be shot,’ because the moment you tell them that, they make a point of going there at once. I’m sick of always saying the same thing. If they go out in the streets they must expect to be killed.”

“These students and these Jews,” said his wife, “come and shoot you round the corner. I always said this would be the end of it. I always said no good would come of it. It is disgraceful!”

Alexander Petrovitch settled down to his dinner, and, putting a napkin under his chin, began to eat the soup, but it was cold and he had no appetite.

“Where are the children?” he said.

“They’ve had their dinner,” said his wife. “Kolia and Peter are reading in the next room.”

Alexander Petrovitch called his children, and two little boys came into the room. Kolia, a fair-haired, pasty-faced boy with large grey eyes, was aged nine, and Peter, a fat, dark-haired little creature in a sailor’s suit was aged seven. Peter climbed on to his father’s knee and his father asked him what he had been doing.

“We’ve been making bombs with the snow,” said Peter; “and playing at the Revolution. Kolia was a policeman and I was a Social Democrat, and I made a bomb and threw it at him and killed him.”

“How dare you play such games?” said their mother--“that’s all your fault,” she added to her husband; “it’s you who have put such ideas into their heads. Heaven knows when children begin to get such ideas; I think the end of the world is come. Look at our schools: the children can’t read; the universities are all in the hands of the Jews. The girls at school have all gone quite mad. Nothing but hysteria, hysteria, hysteria! It’s a disgrace. Don’t let me ever hear of your playing such games again,” she said to the children.

The children, used to perpetual scolding, said nothing. Alexander Petrovitch laughed.

“At least, I hope,” said his wife, “that the result of all this, and of your having to do all this extra work, will be that you will get promotion.”

“I doubt it,” said Alexander Petrovitch. “I have got no protection, and protection is everything. I have finished my dinner. I want some tea.”

His wife called Sasha, the maid, and told her to bring the samovar, and then scolded her violently because it was not ready. She then made a further scene about the way in which the lemon was cut. Finally the samovar was brought, Alexander Petrovitch was given his tea and began smoking cigarette after cigarette in gloomy silence. His wife sat at the head of the table and said nothing. The children played in the corner with some wooden soldiers, and every now and then a dull boom was heard outside, and once or twice the window shook and rattled.

“Guns!” said Alexander Petrovitch. “They are firing in the Tverskaia, I suppose.”

At that moment the bell rang.

“I think,” said Alexander Petrovitch’s wife, “that it must be Ivan Ivanovitch; he said he would come round this evening if he could.”

“I shall have to go presently,” said Alexander Petrovitch; “I’ve got to go back to the office.”

Then the door was opened, and seven or eight people walked into the room. They were young schoolboys and students between the ages of sixteen and eighteen, and there were two girls with them.

Alexander Petrovitch and his wife were surprised at this influx of guests, and the children stood up in the corner and stared.

“Whom have I the honour to address and what can I do for you?” said Alexander Petrovitch.

A young student with long black hair, a seedy overcoat, and a worn fur cap appeared to be the spokesman of the group, and, taking off his cap, said: “We are the representatives of the flying column of the Social Revolutionaries. We have come to carry out our orders.”

Alexander Petrovitch’s wife stood up and turned pale. The schoolboys and the students surrounded Alexander Petrovitch and, linking their arms in his, forced him out of the room. He turned round and looked at his wife and the children. “I thought as much!” he said. Then he was pushed out of the room and down the staircase.

All this happened in a moment. His wife stood still as though transfixed, and could not move or utter.

Two or three minutes passed in breathless silence, and Peter began to cry. They had left the door open. The banging of the street door was heard, and then two or three shots rang out.

Sasha, the maid, came rushing into the room, screaming with all her might--

“They have killed Alexander Petrovitch in the yard!”

THE AMORPHISTS

I was staying not long ago in a small town in the centre of Russia which I will call T----. It was a small, sleepy town, through which an indolent river wended its way. The houses were low, one-storeyed, built of wood and painted white, adorned with old-fashioned delicate stucco, delicate pilasters and wooden verandahs; and many of them had gardens and trellis-work arbours. The place breathed a spirit of the dying eighteenth century. One seemed to be in a kind of Russian “Cranford.” The shops and market-places, the hotel with its stiff early Victorian furniture--mahogany, stuffed with faded red rep--the squatting churches, the slow moving, leisurely inhabitants, all seemed to belong to a remoter time than ours. Here, I thought, in any case, the Revolution cannot have penetrated; to seek for politics here would be like looking for bombs in the Garden of Proserpine. But when I was waiting for my dinner in the dining-room of the hotel, when the great mechanical barrel-organ had played a tune by Donizetti out of _Lucrezia Borgia_ for the tenth time, I was disillusioned by the innkeeper, a fat, smiling man, with a huge beard, high boots, and a loose, white untucked shirt, with a red corded waistband round it.

“Here,” I said to him, “you have in any case the advantage of being free from revolutionary turmoil.”

“How so?” he asked, in a slightly injured tone, which was due to the fact, not that I had suspected his native city of being anti-revolutionary, but of being void of teeming events.

“We, too, have our disorders, very serious disorders,” he said, with pride. “The day before yesterday there were terrible occurrences.”

“Really,” I answered, with great interest, “what were they?”

“Is it possible that you have not heard,” he asked, “Why, everybody knows that the day before yesterday the Amorphists made an attempt.”

I confessed that I had not heard of it, because I had been very busy, and I pressed him to relate to me the proceedings of the Amorphists, adding that I was not quite sure who the Amorphists were.

“Everybody knows,” said my host, “that the Amorphists are the extreme left wing of the Free Law Party. They are to the left of all left parties, which run thus: Social Revolutionaries, Maximalists, Anarchists, Amorphists.”

“But what are the Free Law Party?” I asked.

“The Free Law Party,” he answered, “are those people who wish the law to be free.”

“How free?” I asked.

“Free Law,” he answered, “is like free trade. In some countries there is free trade. We wish for free law; everybody to be free to make whatever laws he likes, and everybody else to be free to obey them.”

“And to disobey them?” I asked.

“Yes, of course, and to disobey them. Well, I will tell you what happened. The Amorphists--that is to say the left wing of the Free Law Party--were getting discontented at the inactivity of the rest of their party”----

“What are Amorphists?” I interrupted.

“It is a secret,” he answered, “but I will tell you this; nobody can be an Amorphist who recognises any law or rule, and nobody can be an Amorphist who is more than seventeen years of age. They have no President, for every Amorphist is a President. Their watchword is, ‘Death to the Bourgeoisie; away with the intellectuals; down with the students; to hell with the Jews; Life, Liberty, Anarchy; Death.’ They wear a sign nobody can recognise unless he is initiated, and whoever betrays it is condemned to be drowned on dry land, like a Catholic Freemason.”

“What are those?” I asked.

“Freemasons,” he replied--he had now become used, and consequently indulgent to my ignorance--“are those people who drink each other’s healths in water. Well, as I was saying, the Amorphists who constituted the left wing of the Free Law Party were discontented with the apathy of the rest of their colleagues, and they decided that this state of things could not last any longer, and that they must make themselves felt; so they decided to kill Michael Ivanovitch.”

“Who,” I asked, “is Michael Ivanovitch?”