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THE WHITE TERROR AND THE RED




    THE WHITE TERROR
    AND
    THE RED

    A Novel of Revolutionary Russia

    BY
    A. CAHAN
    Author of "Yekl" and "The Imported Bridegroom."

    [Illustration]

    NEW YORK
    A. S. BARNES & COMPANY
    1905




    Copyright, 1905
    BY A. S. BARNES & COMPANY

    _All rights reserved_

    _Published February, 1905_
    _Second Printing, February, 1905_
    _Third Printing, March, 1905_




CONTENTS.


    CHAPTER                                    PAGE

          I. An Affront to His Czar               1

         II. The White Terror                    14

        III. Pievakin Pleads Guilty              20

         IV. The "Demonstration"                 28

          V. Pavel's First Step                  40

         VI. A Meeting on New Terms              57

        VII. "Terrorism Without Violence"        62

       VIII. Makar's Canvass                     76

         IX. A Day Underground                   81

          X. The Czar's Escape                   93

         XI. A Mysterious Arrest                 97

        XII. A Bewildering Encounter            103

       XIII. A Gendarme's Sister                112

        XIV. Underground Miroslav               121

         XV. A Warning                          135

        XVI. Clara at Home                      147

       XVII. The Countess' Discovery            151

      XVIII. Pavel at Boyko's Court             160

        XIX. Strawberries                       169

         XX. A "Conspiracy Trip"                178

        XXI. Makar's Father                     187

       XXII. From Cellar to Palace              196

      XXIII. An Unforeseen Suggestion           205

       XXIV. Vladimir Finds His Cause           211

        XXV. Clara Becomes "Illegal"            227

       XXVI. On Sacred Ground                   235

      XXVII. A Postponed Wedding                244

     XXVIII. A Second Courtship                 252

       XXIX. A Hunted Monarch                   260

        XXX. The Mystery of a Shop              267

       XXXI. A Reassuring Search                277

      XXXII. The Red Terror                     287

     XXXIII. The Revelation                     299

      XXXIV. The Czar Takes Courage             310

       XXXV. A Hunted People                    319

      XXXVI. A "Paper from the Czar"            331

     XXXVII. The Defence Committee              339

    XXXVIII. The Nihilist's Guard               357

      XXXIX. The Riot                           371

         XL. Light out of Darkness              389

        XLI. Pavel Becomes "Illegal"            401

       XLII. Ominous Footsteps                  408

      XLIII. A Message Through the Wall         423




THE WHITE TERROR AND THE RED




THE WHITE TERROR AND THE RED.




CHAPTER I.

AN AFFRONT TO HIS CZAR.


Alexander II. passed part of the summer of 1874 in a German
health-resort taking the mineral waters. When not in the castle in which
he was staying with his train he affected the life of an ordinary
citizen. He did so as much from necessity as from choice. Czar or
subject, the same water must be drunk at the same spot and hour by all
who seek its cure. Nor can any distinction be made in the matter of the
walk which the patient is to take after draining his two or three
gobletsful.

The promenade at a watering place is a great parade-ground for the
display of plumage, the gayest and costliest gowns being reserved for
the procession that follows the taking of the remedy; but while the race
is under way and everybody is striving to throw everybody else into the
shade, the fact of their being there pierces each dress as with "X"
rays, showing their flesh to be of the same fragile clay.

So the Czar accepted the levelling effect of the place good-naturedly
and sought diversion in the unsustained role of a common mortal.
Unsustained, because he carried his gigantic, beautiful form with a
graceful self-importance and a martial erectness that betrayed his
incognito even in the open country stretches to which he would stroll
off in search of mild adventure and flirtation.

It was a late afternoon in the valley. The river glittered crimson. The
hills on the other side of the summer town were capped by a sultry haze.
Donkeys used in ascending these hills were trotting about impishly or
standing in stupid row awaiting custom. The sun blazed down upon a
parade of a hundred countries, including a jet black prince from Africa,
a rajah, a Chinaman in dazzling silks, a wealthy Galician Jew in atlas,
and a pasha with German features.

The Czar, his immense figure encased in a light frock coat of excellent
fit, was sauntering along apparently unaccompanied except by his terrier
and cane. When saluted he would raise his straw hat and nod his enormous
well-shaped head with a cordiality that bordered on good-fellowship. He
seemed to relish this exchange of courtesies with people who were not
his subjects in this little republic of physical malady. It was as
though he felt apart from his autocratic self without feeling out of
that pampering atmosphere of deference and attention which was his
second nature; and he gave an effect of inhaling his freedom as one does
the first whiffs of spring air.

As to his fellow patients, they either discovered something majestic in
the very dog that followed him, or were struck by the knuckles of his
ungloved hands, for example, as if it were remarkable that they should
be the same sort of knuckles as their own. He was strikingly well-built
and strikingly handsome. He wore thick close-cropped side whiskers of
the kind that is rarely becoming, but his face they became very well
indeed, adding majesty to a cast of large, clear-cut features. It was
the most monarchical face of its time, and yet it was anything but a
strong face. His imposing side whiskers and moustache left bare a full
sensuous mouth and a plump weak chin; his blueish eyes gave forth
suggestions of melancholy and anguish. Interest in him was whetted by
stories of his passion for Princess Dolgoruki, lady in waiting to the
Czarina; so the women at the watering place tried to decipher the tale
of his liaison in those sad amative eyes of his.

Two refined looking, middle-aged women attracted attention by the
bizarre simplicity with which one of them was attired and coiffured. She
was extremely pale and made one think of an insane asylum or a convent.
She was grey, while her companion had auburn hair and was shorter and
flabbier of figure. They were conversing in French, but it was not their
native tongue. The one with the grey hair was Pani Oginska, a Polish
woman; the other a Russian countess named Anna Nicolayevna Varova
(Varoff). They had first met, in this watering place, less than a
fortnight ago, when a chat, in the course of which they warmed to each
other, led to the discovery that their estates lay in neighbouring
provinces in Little Russia. They were preceded by a slender youth of
eighteen in a broad-brimmed straw hat and a clean-shaven elderly little
man in one of soft grey felt. These were Prince Pavel Alexeyevich
Boulatoff, a son of the countess by a former marriage, and Alexandre
Alexandrovich Pievakin, his private tutor, as well as one of his
instructors at the gymnasium[A] of his native town. Pavel's straw hat
was too sedate for his childish face and was pushed down so low that a
delicately sculptured chin and mouth and the turned up tip of a rudely
hewn Russian nose was all one could see under its vast expanse of yellow
brim. The old man knew no German and this was his first trip abroad, so
his high-born pupil, who had an advantage over him in both these
respects, was explaining things to him, with an air at once patronising
and respectful. Presently Pavel interrupted himself.

  [A] A classical Russian high school modelled after its German
  namesake.

"The Czar!" he whispered, in a flutter. "The Czar!" he repeated over his
shoulder, addressing himself to his mother.

Pievakin raised his glance, paling as he did so, but was so overawed by
the sight that he forthwith dropped his eyes, a sickly expression on his
lips.

When the men came face to face with their monarch they made way and
snatched off their hats as if they were on fire. Countess Varoff,
Pavel's mother, curtseyed deeply, her flaccid insignificant little body
retreating toward the side of the promenade and then sinking to the
ground; while the Polish woman proceeded on her way stiffly without so
much as a nod of her head. The Czar returned the greeting of the Russian
woman gallantly and disappeared in the rear of them.

The group walked on in nervous silence, the two women now in the lead.
When they reached a deserted spot the youth suddenly flushed a violent
red, and, thrusting out his finely chiselled chin at his mother, he
said, in quick pugnacious full-toned accents as out of keeping with his
boyish figure as his hat:

"Mother, you are not going to keep up acquaintance with a person who has
offered an insult to our Czar."

"Paul! What has come over you?" the countess stammered out, colouring
abjectly as she paused.

"I mean just what I say, mother."

The elderly little man by his side looked on sheepishly, the cold sweat
standing in beads on his forehead.

"Don't mind this wild boy, I beg of you," Anna Nicolayevna said to the
Polish woman. "Don't pay the least attention to him. He imagines himself
a full grown man, but he is merely a silly boy and he gives me no end of
trouble. Don't take it ill, _ma chere_." She rattled it off in a great
flurry of embarrassment, straining the boy back tenderly, while she was
condemning him.

"I don't take it ill at all," Pani Oginska answered tremulously. "He's
perfectly right. Your acquaintance has been a great pleasure to me,
countess, but I can see that my company at this place would be very
inconvenient to you. Adieu!"

She walked off toward