It is not against the Government, so much as against the illegal and tyrannous cruelty practised by many of its officials, that a certain section of the “Revolutionists” raise a remonstrance. It is astonishing how conservative some of these terrible “Revolutionists” appear to be. Many of them still look to the Tzar with a pathetic conviction that all would be well, if only the cry of his distressed children could reach his paternal ears. They ask so little; they would be thankful for such small mercies; yet there is apparently slight hope that the Tzar will be allowed to hear or would listen to the appeal of his much-enduring people!
“Mademoiselle Sophie” had promised to take tea with me on a particular afternoon, and to give me an account of her imprisonment. I had heard the general outlines before, but was anxious to hear her tell the tale in her own words. I may mention here that “Mademoiselle Sophie’s” acquaintance had been sought, and that the idea of writing her story for publication in England did not emanate from her. Of her veracity there is not the faintest question; moreover, there was, evidently, no motive for deception.
Though I had heard that “Mademoiselle Sophie” had been a mere girl when she was first sent to face the rigours of a Russian prison, I was scarcely prepared to see anyone so young and fragile-looking as the lady in black who entered the room, with a quiet, reserved manner, courteous and dignified. I felt something like a thrill of dismay when I realised that it was an extremely sensitive woman who had gone through the scenes that she describes in these pages. She had been the more ill-prepared for the hardships of prison-life from having passed her childhood amidst every care and comfort.
MRS. MONA CAIRD.
She was singularly reticent and self-possessed. In speaking, there was no emotional emphasis, whatever she might be saying. The only comment on her narrative that one could detect was an occasional touch of cold scorn or irony. The more terrible the incident that she related, the more quiet became her tones.
It seemed as if the flame of indignation had burnt itself out in the years of suffering that she had passed through. The traces of those years were in her face. Its very stillness and pallor seemed to tell the tale of pain endured silently and in solitude for so long. It was written, too, in the steadfast quality that expressed itself in her whole bearing, and in the entire absence of any petty self-consciousness. In spite of the awful nervous strain that she had endured she had no little restless habits or movements of any kind.
One felt in her a vast reserve force and a dauntless courage. It was courage of a kind that is almost terrible, for it accompanied a highly organised and imaginative temperament, a nervous temperament, be it observed, which implies controlled and ordered, not uncontrolled and disordered nervous power. The half-hysterical persons who class themselves among the possessors of this temperament are apt to overlook that important distinction.
“Mademoiselle Sophie” gained none of her courage from insensitiveness. Her whole life was dedicated to the cause of her country, and the personal elements had been sacrificed to this object beyond herself: the forlorn hope which has already claimed so many of the noblest and bravest spirits in all the Tzar’s dominions.
After “Mademoiselle Sophie” left that afternoon, I could not help placing her in imagination beside the average woman that our own civilisation has produced (not a fair comparison doubtless); and the latter seemed painfully small in aim and motive, pitifully petty and fussy and lacking in repose and dignity when compared with the calm heroine of this Russian romance.