Chapter 18

Half in, half out of Europe, Alexander II. awoke with his own hand the great nation still wrapped in the sleep of the Middle Ages, only to find that he had stirred a slumbering power whose movements were soon to prove beyond control. He poured out education like water upon the surface of a vast field full of hidden seed, which must inevitably spring up wheat or tares--a bountiful harvest of good or a terrific growth of evil. He made reading and writing compulsory to the whole of his people. With a stroke of the pen he threw aside the last prop to despotic rule. Yet he hoped to continue Czar of All the Russias. This tall, pale, gentle, determined man was a man of courage. When the time came he faced the consequence of his own temerity with an unflinching eye.

“What do you want of me?” he asked, the very moment after he had been saved almost by a miracle from assassination. For he knew that he was giving more than was wise. It is said that he was puzzled and thoughtful after each attempt upon his life.

The war with Turkey was the first sign that Russia was awakening--that the soldiers knew how to read and write. It was the first time in history that the nation forced a Czar to declare war, and Servia was full of Russian volunteers fighting for Christian Slavs before the Emperor realized that he must fight--and fight alone, for no nation in Europe would help him. He had taught Russia to read; had raised the veil of ignorance that hung between his people and the rest of civilization. They had read of the Bulgarian atrocities, and there was no holding them.

To rule autocratically what was then the vastest empire in the world was in itself more than one brain could compass. But in addition to his own internal troubles, Alexander II. was surrounded by European difficulties. England, his steady, deadly enemy, despite a declaration of neutrality, was secretly helping Turkey. Austria, as usual, the dog waiting on the threshold, was ready to side with the winner--for a consideration. No wonder this man was always weary. It is said that all through his reign he received and despatched telegrams at any hour of the night.

No wonder that his heart was hardened towards Poland. The most liberal-minded Czar had his mean point, as every man must have. There are many great and good men who will write a check readily enough and look twice at a penny. There are many who will give generously with one hand while grasping with the other that which is really the property of their neighbor. Alexander's mean point was Poland.

On the occasion of his first imperial visit to Warsaw he said, in the cold, calm voice which was so hated and feared: “Gentlemen, let us have no more dreams.” Eleven years later he reminded an influential deputation of Polish nobles of the unforgiven and unforgotten words, commending the caution to their attention again. He paid frequent visits to Warsaw on one excuse or another. This dreamer would have no dreaming in his dominion. This mean man must ever be looking at his hoard. The chief interest in the study of a human life lies around the inexplicable. If we were quite consistent we should be entirely dull. No one knows why this liberal autocrat was mean to Poland.

From Warsaw, the city which has been commanded to stand still, Cartoner travelled across the plains of endless snow towards the north. He found as he progressed a hundred signs of the awakening. The very faces of the people had changed since he last looked upon them only a few years earlier. These people were now a nation, conscious of their own strength. They had fought in a great and victorious war, not because they had been commanded to fight, but because they wanted to. They had followed with understanding the diplomatic warfare that succeeded the signing of the treaty of San Stefano. They had won and lost. They were men, and no longer driven beasts.

It was evening when Cartoner arrived at St. Petersburg. The long northern twilight had begun, and the last glow of the western sky was reflected on the golden dome of St. Isaac's, while the arrowy spire of the Admiralty shot up into a cloudless sky.

The Warsaw Railway Station is in a quiet part of the town, and the streets through which Cartoner drove in his hired sleigh were almost deserted. It was the hour of the promenade in the Summer Garden, or the drive in the Newski Prospect, so that all the leisured class were in another quarter of the town. St. Petersburg is, moreover, the most spacious capital in the world, where there is more room than the inhabitants can occupy, where the houses are too large and the streets too wide. The Catherine Canal was, of course, frozen, and its broken surface had a dirty, ill-kept air, while the snow was spotted with rubbish and refuse, and trodden down into numberless paths and crossings. Cartoner looked at it indifferently. It had no history yet. The streets were silent beneath their cloak of snow. All St. Petersburg is silent for nearly half the year, and is the quietest city in the world, excepting Venice.

The sleigh sped across the Nicholas Bridge to the Vasili Island. The river showed no signs of spring yet. The usual pathways across it were still in use. The Vasili Ostrov is less busy than that greater part of the city which lies across the river. Behind the academy of Arts, and leading out of the Bolshoi Prospect, are a number of parallel streets where quiet people live--lawyers and merchants, professors at the university or at one or other of the numerous schools and colleges facing the river and looking across it towards the English Quay.

It was to one of these streets that Cartoner had told his driver to proceed, and the man had some difficulty in finding the number. It was a house like any other in the street--like any other in any other street. For St. Petersburg is a monstrous town, showing a flat face to the world, exhibiting to the sky a flat expanse of roof broken here and there by some startling inequality, the dagger-like spire of St. Peter and St. Paul, the great roof of the Kasan Cathedral, the dome of St. Isaac's--the largest cathedral in the world.

When the sleigh at length drew up with a shrill clang of bells the door-keeper came from beneath the great porch without enthusiasm. His was a quiet house, and he did not care for strangers, especially at this time, when every man looked askance at a new-comer and the police gave the dvorniks no peace. He seemed to recognize Cartoner, however, for he raised his hand to his peaked cap when he answered that the gentleman asked for was within.

“On the second floor. You will remember the door,” he said, over his shoulder, as Cartoner, having paid the driver, hurried towards the house, leaving the dvornik to bring the luggage.

Cartoner's summons at the door on the second floor was answered by a clumsy Russian maid-servant, who smiled a broad, good-natured recognition when she saw him, and, turning without a word, led the way along a narrow passage. The smell of tobacco smoke and a certain bareness of wall and floor suggested a bachelor's home. The maid opened the door of a room and stood aside for Cartoner to pass in.

Seated near an open wood-fire was a man with grizzled hair and a short, brown beard, which had the look of concealing a determined chin. He was in the act of filling a wooden pipe from a jar on the table, and he stood up, pipe in hand, to greet the new-comer.

“Ah!” he said. “I was wondering if you would come, or if you had got other work to do.”

“No, I am at the same work. And you?”

“As you see,” replied the bearded man, dragging forward a chair with his foot and seating himself again before the fire. “I am here still, where you left me”--he paused to make a brief calculation--“five years ago. I stayed here all through the war--all through the Berlin Congress, when it was not good to be an Englishman in Petersburg. But I stayed. Tallow! It does not sound heroic, but the world must have its tallow. And there is a simplicity about commerce, you know.”

He gave a short laugh--the laugh of a man who had tried something and failed. Something that was not commerce, for his voice and speech had a ring of other things.

“Can you put me up?” asked Cartoner. “Only for a few days, perhaps.”

“As long as you stay in Petersburg you stay in these rooms,” replied the other, gravely.

Cartoner nodded his thanks and sat down. Their attitude towards each other had the repose which is only existent in a friendship that has lasted since childhood.

“Well?” he inquired.

“Gad!” exclaimed the other, “we are in a queer way. I went to the opera the other evening. He showed his face in the imperial box and the house was empty in half an hour. He always drives alone in his sleigh now, so that only one royal life may go at a time. They'll get him--they'll get him! And he knows it.”

“Fools!” said Cartoner.

“They are worse than fools,” answered the other. “The man is down, and they strike him. His asthma is worse. He has half a dozen complaints. His policy has failed. It was the finest policy ever tried in Russia. He is the finest Czar they have ever had. He gave them trial by jury; he abolished corporal punishment. Fools! they are the scum of this earth, Cartoner!”

“I know,” replied Cartoner, in his gentle way, “students who cannot learn--workmen who will not work--women whom no one will marry.”

“Yes, the sons and daughters of the serfs that he emancipated. It makes one sick to talk of them. Let me hear about yourself.”

“Well,” answered Cartoner, “I have had nothing to eat since breakfast.”

“That is all you have to tell me about yourself?”

“That is all.”

XXXI

THE PAYMENT

It was on every gossip's tongue in St. Petersburg that Jeliaboff had been arrested.

“It is the beginning of the end,” men said. “They will now catch the others. The new reign of terror is over.”

But Jeliaboff himself--a dangerous man (one of the Terrorists), the chief of the plot to blow up the imperial train at the Alexandroff Station--said that it was not so. This also, the mere bravado of an arrested criminal, was bandied from mouth to mouth.

For two years the most extraordinary agitation of modern days had held Russian society within its grip. All the world seemed to whisper. Men walking in the streets turned to glance over their shoulders at the approach of a step, at the sound of a sleigh-bell. The women were in the secret, too; and when the women touch politics they are politics no longer. For there should be no real emotion in politics; only the stimulated emotion of the platform.

For two years the Czar had been slowly and surely ostracized by a persecution which was as cruel as it was unreasoning.

In former days the curious, and the many who loved to look on royalty, had studied his habits and hours to the end that they might gain a glimpse of him or perhaps a bow from the courteous Emperor. Now his habits and his daily life were watched for quite another purpose. If it was known that he would pass through a certain street, he was now allowed a monopoly of that thoroughfare. None passed nearer to the Winter Palace than he could help. If the Czar was seen to approach, men hurried in the opposite direction; women called their children to them. He was a leper among his own people.

“Do not go to the opera to-morrow,” one lady would say to another. “I have heard that the Czar is to be there.”

“Do not pass through the Little Sadovaia,” men said to one another; “the street is mined. Do not let your wife linger in the Newski Prospect; it is honeycombed by mines.”

The Czar withdrew himself, as a man must who perceives that others shrink from him; as the leper who sees even the pitiful draw aside his cloak. But some ceremonies he would not relinquish; and to some duties he remained faithful, calmly facing the risk, which he fully recognized.

He went to the usual Sunday review on the 12th of March, as all the world knows. It was a brilliant, winter morning. The sun shone from a cloudless sky upon streets and houses buried still beneath their winter covering of snow. The houses always look too large for their inmates, the streets too wide for those that walk them. St. Petersburg was planned on too large a scale by the man who did everything largely, and made his window looking out upon Europe a bigger window than the coldness of his home would allow.

The review passed off successfully. The Czar, men said, was in good spirits. He had that morning signed a decree which was now in the hands of Loris Melikoff, and would to-morrow be given to the world, proving even to the most sceptical for the hundredth time that he had at heart the advance of Russia--the greater liberty of his people.

Instead of returning direct to the Winter Palace, the Czar paid his usual visit to his cousin, the Grand Duchess Catherine. He quitted her palace at two o'clock in his own carriage, accompanied by half a dozen Cossacks. His officers followed in two sleighs. It was never known which way he would take. He himself gave the order to the coachman. He knew the streets as thoroughly as the driver himself; for he had always walked in them unattended, unheeded, and unknown--had always mixed with his subjects. This was no French monarch living in an earthly heaven above his people. He knew--always had known--what men said to each other in the streets.

He gave the order to go to the Winter Palace by way of the Catherine Canal, which was not the direct way. Had he passed down the Newski Prospect half of that great street would have been blown to the skies. The road running by the side of the Catherine Canal was in 1881 a quiet enough thoroughfare, with large houses staring blankly across the frozen canal. The canal itself was none too clean a sight, for the snow was old and soiled and strewed with refuse. In some places there were gardens between the road and the waterways, but most of its length was bounded by a low wall and a railing.

The road itself was almost deserted. The side streets of St. Petersburg are quieter than the smaller thoroughfares of any other city in the world. A confectioner's boy was alone on the pavement, hurrying along and whistling as he went on his Sunday errand of delivery. He hardly glanced at the carriage that sped past him. Perhaps he saw a man looking over the low wall at the approach of the cavalcade. Perhaps he saw the bomb thrown and heard the deafening report. Though none can say what he heard or saw at that minute, for he was dead the next.

The bomb had fallen under the carriage at the back. A Cossack and his horse, following the imperial conveyance, were instantly killed. The Czar stepped out from amid the debris on to the torn and riven snow. He stumbled, and took a proffered arm. They found blood on the cushions afterwards. At that moment the only thought in his mind seemed to be anger, and he glanced at the dying Cossack--at the dead baker-boy. The pavement and the road were strewn with wounded--some lying quite still, others attempting to lift themselves with numbed and charred limbs. It was very cold.

Ryssakoff, who had thrown the bomb, was already in the hands of his captors. Had the crowd been larger, had the official element been weaker, he would have been torn to pieces then and there. The Czar went towards him. Some say that he spoke to him. But no clear account of those few moments was ever obtained. The noise, the confusion, the terror of it seemed to have deadened the faculties of all who took part in this tragedy, and they could only act mechanically, as men who were walking in their sleep.

Already a crowd had collected. Every moment added to its numbers.

“Stand back! Stand back! A second bomb is coming!” cried more than one voice. There are a hundred witnesses ready to testify that they heard this strange warning. But no man seemed to heed it. There are moments in the lives of men when their contempt for death raises them at one bound to the heights of immortality.

Those around the Czar urged him to quit the spot at once. In such a crowd of people there must be some enemies. At last he turned and went towards the sleigh which had been brought forward to take the place of the shattered carriage. He was pale now, and walked with an effort.

The onlookers stood aside to make a passage for him. Many raised their hats, and made silent manifestations of their respect and pity.

One man, alone, stood with folded arms, hat on head, and watched the Czar. He was on the pavement, with his back to the iron gate leading to the canal. The pavement was not six feet wide, and the Czar came along it towards him. For a moment they faced each other. Then the freed son of the serf raised both hands and threw his missile on the stones between them--at the feet of the man who had cut the chain of his slavery.

It was the serf who shrieked. The Emperor uttered no plaint. A puff of white-gray smoke rose to heaven. And those who watched there no doubt took note of it.

A shower of snow and human debris was thrown into the air. The very stones of the pavement were displaced.

The Emperor was on the ground against the railings. He was blind. One leg was gone, the other torn and mutilated to the hip. It was pitiful. He uttered no sound, but sought to move his bare limbs on the snow.

This was the end--the payment. He discharged his debt without a murmur. He had done the right--against the counsel of the wise, against his crown and his own greatness, against his purse and his father's teaching. He had followed the dictates of his own conscience. He had done more than any other Czar, before or since, for the good of Russia. And this was the payment!

The other--the man who had thrown the bomb--was already dead. The terrific explosion had sent his soul hard after the puff of white smoke, and in the twinkling of an eye he stood at the bar of the Great Assize. It is to be hoped that he made a good defence there, and did not stammer in the presence of his Judge.

The Czar's gentlemen in attendance were all killed or wounded. He was left to the care of his Cossack escort, who were doing what they could to succor him--though, being soldiers, they knew that he had passed beyond all human aid. The crowd parted to make way for a tall man who literally threw aside all who stood in his path. It was the Emperor's brother, the Grand Duke Michael, brought hither by the sound of the first explosion. He knelt on the blood-stained snow and spoke to the dying man.

The sleigh towards which he had been walking was now brought forward again, and the Czar was lifted from the snow. There was no doctor near. The mob drew back in dumb horror. In the crowd stood Cartoner, brought hither by that instinct which had made him first among the Vultures--the instinct that took him to the battle-field, where he was called upon to share the horror and reap none of the glory.

His quiet eyes were ablaze for once with a sudden, helpless anger. He could not even give way to the first and universal impulse to kill the killer.

He stood motionless through the brief silence that succeeded to the second explosion. There is a silence that follows those great events brought about by a man which seems to call aloud for a word from God.

Then, because it was his duty to draw his buzzing thoughts together, to be watchful and quick, to think and act while others stood aghast, he took one last look at the dying Emperor, and turned to make his way from the crowd while yet he could. He had pieced together, with the slow accuracy that Deulin envied him, the small scraps of information obtained from one source or another in Warsaw, in London from Captain Cable, in St. Petersburg from half a dozen friends. This was Poland's opportunity. A sudden inspiration had led him to look for the centre of the evil, not in Warsaw, but in St. Petersburg. And that which other men called his luck had brought him within sound of the first explosion by the side of the Catherine Canal.

He passed through a back street and out into wider thoroughfares. He hurried as much as was prudent, and in a few moments was beyond the zone, as it were, of alarm and confusion. A sleigh came towards him. The driver was half asleep, and looked about him with a placid, stupid face. Here was a man who had heard nothing.

Cartoner called him, and did not wait for him to descend to unhook the heavy leather apron.

“The telegraph office,” he said.

And when the driver had settled down to his usual breakneck speed, he urged him to go faster. The passers on the pavement were going about their ordinary business now, bent on paying Sunday calls or taking Sunday exercise. None knew yet what had taken place a few hundred yards away.

Cartoner sat with clenched teeth and thought. He had a strong grasp over his own emotions, but his limbs were shaking inside his thick furs. He made a supreme effort of memory. It was a moment in a lifetime, and he knew it. Which is not always the case, for great moments often appear great only when we look back at them.

He had not his code-books with him. He dared not carry them in the streets of St. Petersburg, where arrest might meet him at any corner by mistake or on erroneous suspicion. His head was stored with a thousand things to be remembered. Could he trust his memory to find the right word, or the word that came nearest to the emergency of this moment? Could he telegraph that the Emperor was dead when he had last seen him living, but assuredly feeling his way across the last frontier? The Czar must assuredly be dead before a telegram despatched now could reach England. It was a risk. But Cartoner was of a race of men who seem to combine with an infinite patience the readiness to take a heavy risk at a given moment.

The telegraph office was quiet. The clerks were dignified and sedate behind their caging--stiff and formal within their semi-military uniform. They knew nothing. As soon as the news reached them the inexorable wire windows would be shut down, and no unofficial telegrams could be despatched from Russia.

Cartoner had five minutes' start, perhaps, in front of the whole world. Five minutes might suffice to flash his news beyond the reach of recall.

The sense of discipline was strong in him. His first message was to London--a single word from the storehouse of his infallible memory.

He sent a second telegram to Deulin, in Warsaw, which was no longer. The first message might reach its destination. The chances of the second were not so good, and the second might mean life or death to Wanda. He walked slowly back towards the double doors. He might even gain a minute there, he thought, by simulating clumsiness with the handle should any one wish to enter in haste. He was at the outer door when a man hurried up the steps. This was a small man, with a pale and gentle face, and eyes in which a dull light seemed to smoulder.

Cartoner detained him on the step for quite half a minute by persistently turning the handle the wrong way. When at length he was allowed to enter, he swore at the Englishman in a low voice as he passed, which Captain Cable would have recognized had he heard it. The two men looked at each other in the twilight between the doors. Each knew that the other knew. Then the little man passed in. The front of his black coat had a white stain upon it, as if he had been holding a loaf of bread under his arm. Cartoner noticed it, and remembered it afterwards, when he learned that the bombs which seem to have been sown broadcast in the streets of St. Petersburg that day were painted white.

He crossed the square to the Winter Palace, and stood with the silent crowd there until the bells told all Petersburg the news that the mightiest monarch had been called to stand before a greater than any earthly throne.

XXXII

A LOVE-LETTER