The Genius

by Margaret Horton Potter

It was odd, perhaps, that Ivan never perceived how often his entrance into their rooms stopped or turned the conversation; though perhaps much personal sacrifice had been made for that meeting. They had all come to be proud of the young composer's fondness for them; and they held a tacit agreement that he should never, through them, be placed in danger. For, though Ivan saw it not, the shadow of the rope, or of the distant, frozen, Siberian mines, hung over this little band of youths by day and by night, sleeping and waking. He had fallen upon the very centre of the first students' brotherhood: an alliance formed a few years before, during that unique revolution of Russian youth which resulted in the birth of Nihilism.

It was about the year 1860, when the question of abolition was shaking the Bear from head to tail, that this unique movement began. By some obscure trait of national heritage, there sprang up, almost at the same hour, through the mediæval gloom that still enveloped Peter's Empire, a thousand points of unwonted light. They were to be found burning at once in the twilight of isolated manors and the midnight of the serf's hut: in the city palace, and its neighboring tenement. Yet they sprang up among one class only—the young men and the young women of the race. The light was the light of intellectual desire for education, for science; and by it all Russia was presently set ablaze. In the history of mankind there is to be found no such tale of bloodless civil war as here. Young men and delicately nurtured girls were casting off every tradition of class, of custom, of convention, assuming the right to go forth freely to the universities, to study: willing, nay, glad, to renounce not only the luxuries but the comforts, almost the bare necessities of existence, they assumed the burden of dogged labor under almost unbearable poverty. Finally, bitterest of all, came the breaking of love-forged chains; the piteous, fruitless struggle of children to explain their position to their parents, members of that older generation who could not understand, who would not yield, who capped defeat by disinheritance.—Such were the battles of this war; such the sudden marvellous development of higher education in Russia.

Many were the virtues of this little army of youths and maidens. They worked together in perfect harmony of theory and practice. There was honor among the men; there was faith among the women. The wonderful history of Sonya Kovalevsky, delicate daughter of a noble house, who became the first woman to occupy a university professorship in Europe, was repeated a thousand times with humbler results. Nor have there failed to linger innumerable stories of those mariages de facilité—levers used simply to force the freedom of some too well-guarded aspirant for knowledge. And all of the young men married, in an hour, to girls whom they had never before seen, not ten, perhaps, failed in giving chivalrous protection, or ever took the possible, cruel advantage of this last, desperate ruse to escape the fettering guardianship of parentage.

But unhappily, though scandal scarcely raised its head among the sincere members of the youthful army, other ills as far-reaching and even more dangerous began soon to sow seeds of evil and of suffering among them. For out of the fermentation arising among these isolated bands, came the bitterest drink that Russia has had to swallow. Poverty, alienation, the common cause against a common enemy—how should it not breed socialism? That established, where find a lack of bolder spirits to take the short step into downright anarchy? Whether it was Turgeniev or Lermontoff who first interpreted this infant Credo, what matters it? As in a night, lo! on every lip was the dread word that was destined to be blazoned in bloody letters at the head of the next and grimmest chapter of all Russian history: Nihilism.

Indeed, indeed, had these young men and women found their little knowledge a deeply dangerous thing! Too quickly they perceived the imperfections of their government, the corruption rife among the officials of every class. And bitter was their reproach. The question to them seemed simple. To correct this, at once and forever, dig up the very soil in which the corruptive roots expanded—here was the way, the only way. And immediately there followed pamphlets and articles. Secret meetings, propagandist organizations, flooded the land. And the red flag was everywhere raised and acknowledged as the student symbol.

It was down upon the southern bank of the Moskva that the three or four thousand students of the Moscow University formed their colony, taking, as it were, communal possession of that narrow neighborhood. There Sergius and Irina dwelt, in circumstances a little better than those of their friends. They kept the rent of their rooms paid; and, moreover, it was a rare thing for a starving youth to drop in on them and find their samovar cold, or their welcome unready. Sergius was himself, indeed, the heart and soul of his branch of the brotherhood; and from him had emanated none knew how many screeds and pamphlets upon his favorite theme. Irina, relying on him as the last protector of her family, questioned none of his plans, but found in his manner of life much that delighted her Bohemian soul.

Now, into their unstable existence, came Ivan; and over him brother and sister had their first dispute: Irina her first victory. True, Sergius knew, and was to know, nothing of his sister's past acquaintance with the composer, or what a debt he, as a brother, owed Ivan. In his eyes Gregoriev was simply a man of the world, unknown to the police, and, therefore, a valuable tool. After that first visit to their rooms, Sergius unfolded to Irina his purpose for the use of her evident admirer, which, to his utter amazement, the girl vehemently opposed. By what tortuous way she managed in the end to reach his deeply hidden scruples, who can say? Suffice it that, shortly, word went round to the effect that this one guest of the Quarter, though he was to be accorded privileges of comradeship, must remain a stranger to the inner significance of the prevalent red flag. Whereupon Irina, breathing freely, entered, for a few weeks, into the Kingdom.

The brief chapter of Ivan's life in the student quarter proceeded merrily to its dramatic close; and, until that close, Ivan remained utterly oblivious of his or the others' danger.

It was in the first week of the queen of months—the May-time, that Gregoriev took it into his head to return the oft-repeated, meagre hospitality of the Akheskaia, by giving a birthday supper to Sergius, on the night of the 10th. The idea had been born in him through some mention of the date by Irina, and a casual regret that their recent contribution towards Burevsky's new chemical outfit must preclude any hope of even the simplest celebration. Whether her speech had been ingenuous or not, it did not occur to Ivan to inquire, so pleased was he at thought of an opportunity of doing something for his new friends at last. Certainly Irina's finished suggestion accomplished its purpose to perfection; for, within three days, the affair was under way and the invitations accepted to a man—and one damsel.

It came as a surprise and an unpleasant one that news of this modest festivity should have gone abroad; but that the fact should be objected to, and that by persons unknown as well as known, was as annoying as it was preposterous. Four days before the affair, Ivan went through a highly unpleasant scene with old Nicholas Rubinstein, who came to beg him to give up his acquaintance in the Akheskaia, and remained to beseech, with an earnestness a trifle startling, that he would, at least, put off this supper. When finally his defeated friend had gone, though he had preserved towards him a courtesy that was as admirable as it had been cutting to old Nicholas, Ivan sat down to his piano feeling troubled at heart, uneasy in mind. Nor were either of these feelings lessened when, a quarter of an hour later, old Sósha, after some unintelligible parley at the door with a being unknown, came limping in to his master bearing two notes—notes that bore no post-mark, but were both tightly sealed. The first was clear enough: