People at the inn were talking of the large numbers of Jews that were going to America. “America or Palestine?” was the great subject of discussion in the three Russian weeklies dedicated to Jewish interests. One day Hannah said, gravely:
“I tell you what, Tamara. Drop your Gentile and the foolish work you are doing and let us all go to America.”
Clara smiled.
“Will it be better if you are caught and put in a black hole?”
Clara smiled again. There was temptation in what her mother said. Being in Russia she was liable to be arrested at any moment; almost sure to perish in a solitary cell or to be transported to the Siberian mines for twenty years. And were not the riots enough to acquit her before her own conscience in case she chose to retire from a movement that was primarily dedicated to the interests of an anti-Semitic people; from a movement that rejoiced in the rioters and had not a word of sympathy for their victims?
But an excuse for getting out of the perils of underground life was not what she wanted. Rather did she wish for a vindication of her conduct in remaining in the Party of the Will of the People in spite of all “the People” did against her race. She was under the sway of two forces, each of them far mightier than any temptation to be free from danger. One of these two forces was Pavel. The other was Public Opinion—the public opinion of underground Russia. According to the moral standard of that Russia every one who did not share in the hazards of the revolutionary movement was a “careerist,” a self-seeker absorbed exclusively in the feathering of his own nest; the Jew who took the special interests of his race specially to heart was a narrow-minded nationalist, and the Nihilist who withdrew from the movement was a renegade. The power which this “underground” public opinion exerted over her was all the greater because of the close ties of affection which, owing to the community of the dangers they faced, bound the active revolutionists to each other. Pavel and Clara were linked by the bonds of love, but she would have staked her life for every other member of the inner circle as readily as she would for him.
They were all particularly dear to her because they were a handful of survivors of an epidemic of arrests that had swept away so many of their prominent comrades. The notion of these people thinking of her as a renegade was too horrible to be indulged in for a single moment. Besides, who would have had the heart to desert the party now that its ranks had been so decimated and each member was of so much value? Still more revolting was such an idea to Clara when she thought of the Nihilists who had died on the scaffold or were dying of consumption or scurvy or going insane in solitary confinement. Sophia, strangled on the gallows, was in her grave. Would she, Clara, abandon the cause to which that noble woman had given her life?
The long and short of it is that it would have required far more courage on her part to go to America and be safe from the Russian gendarmes than to live under constant fire as an active “illegal” in her native country.
This was the kind of thoughts that were occupying her mind at this minute. While her mother was urging her to go to America, she exclaimed mutely: “No, Sophia, I shan’t desert the cause for which they have strangled you. I, too, will die for it.” It seemed easy and the height of happiness to end one’s life as Sophia had done. She saw her dead friend vividly, and as her mind scanned the mysterious, far-away image, the dear, familiar image, her bosom began to heave and her hand clutched her mother’s arm in a paroxysm of suppressed tears.
“Water! Water!” Hannah cried into the open doorway. When the water had been brought and Clara had gulped down a mouthful of it and fixed a faint, wistful smile on her mother, Hannah remarked fiercely: