“He might, before being arrested, have succeeded in destroying the papers, you mean,” said another.
“I feel sure,” asserted one of the older men, “that Iván would sooner part with his life than with our secret.”
There was once more silence in the room. Mirkovitch’s grim eyes travelled mockingly, perhaps even contemptuously, on those assembled round him. Maria Stefanowna took no part at all in the expression of these various surmises and conjectures. She sat listening attentively to all that was said around her, but her eyes, ever and anon, were attached with a curiously anxious and restless look on her father, who sat opposite to her.
“Does it not strike you, my friends,” said Mirkovitch at last, sarcastically, “that it is impossible for us, some eight hundred leagues away, to arrive at any definite conclusion as to what has or has not happened to Volenski?”
That was so, it seemed such a hard and dry fact, and yet there was some slight satisfaction, even in these vague conjectures, shared with one’s neighbour, in hearing what the other comrades’ thoughts and fears were, and every now and then in provoking a reassuring remark from their calm president.
“For my part,” added Mirkovitch, “I think Volenski’s silence is exceedingly ominous. There could have been no possible danger in his sending a wire to the president—who is known to be a great friend of his—apprising him of his arrival in Petersburg. If he had accomplished the journey safely you may be quite sure your chairman would have received such a message.”
The president looked up anxiously at his comrade and stretched out his hand towards him, as if he would check him from proceeding with what he was going to say.
“Speak, Mirkovitch, you have something on your mind,” said one of the committee, and “Let us hear!” came from all corners of the room.
Maria Stefanowna, like the president, made a movement as if she would have wished to stop her father, but, perhaps realising the futility of such an attempt, she resumed her cigarette and her anxious, expectant attitude.
“What I have to say will, I know, not seem pleasant to some of you,” said Mirkovitch, who had now risen and looked down on his assembled brethren from his towering height with that contemptuous smile peculiar to himself. “You see, most of you have had the misfortune of having been born gentlemen. I have not, and, therefore, none of those feelings you call refined have place in my burly, low-born mind. My friends, though you may be gentlemen, you must not be weak and effete like those of your class. For God’s sake, look the facts straight in the face, and try to forget yourselves and your own petty feelings for the good of our country and our people which we serve. You would not listen to me before, against my counsel you used our mighty, our successful plan for the paltry purpose of getting our comrades out of prison. I tell you,” he asserted, bringing his powerful fist down on the table, “that they are all willing over there to die for the good cause. They are not, as we are, fond of life and liberty; they love the cause first, themselves not at all. Why should we care what has happened to Volenski? What is one man against the weal of millions?”