“SERGE WAS ARRESTED.”
“TEACHING THEM TO READ AND WRITE.”
This circumstance, apart from the regret it caused me, had a considerable influence upon my relations with the local revolutionary organisation. The centre of this organisation was a group of young men and women, who, besides the revolutionary agitation that they were carrying on, were in correspondence with other groups of the same sort, for the purpose of exchanging books, helping comrades to escape from prison and fly the country, and so forth. X—— is a big town, chiefly given up to manufactures; and at the time of which I speak there was gathered around this central group a sort of duplex association, composed, on the one hand, of well-educated young folks, and, on the other, of working men. As a precautionary measure, the association as a whole was split up into a number of small circles, or clubs, that met separately, and knew nothing of one another. It was especially in these smaller clubs that the members of the central group carried on their propaganda, the aim of which was then, as it is to-day, to alter the present method of government, to rid the country of the despotism that bears so heavily upon it, and stops its development, and thus to make possible at once an improvement in the condition of the labouring classes, and a reconstruction of Russian society upon a more rational and a more humane basis. With the working people, however, the revolutionists were often forced to begin by teaching them to read and write. Outside of all these clubs, there were in the town a good many people who, while taking no direct part in the movement, sympathised with it, and did what they could to aid and abet it by gifts of money, and by providing refuge for such of the active members as were hiding from the police. With these very useful friends the revolutionists kept up more or less continuous relations.
The programme of the group at X—— needed for its accomplishment a large force of devoted and trustworthy workers; and the arrests that had been made just before my arrival had considerably thinned their ranks. This circumstance, as I have said, changed the nature of my own relations with the revolutionary organisation. Hitherto my visits to the town had been short, only to spend my school holidays in fact. Very young, moreover, I had never belonged to any of the clubs; and my friendships with their members had been purely personal. Now, however, I was older, and I had come to stop at X—— for several months. In the face of the gaps the late arrests had made in the little army of revolutionists, I felt that I must enlist. I offered my services, and they were accepted.
Towards the middle of the summer, my uncle and aunt went to Moroznoië, a little village near the town where their property lay. Leaving St. Petersburg before the end of the University year, I, a student of medicine, had been obliged to put off my examinations until the autumn. These examinations, or rather, my necessity to work and prepare for them, coupled with the presence of a fine public library at X——, gave me the pretext I needed to stay behind during the family villegiatura. After some opposition, and a good deal of talk about the superiority of country air, my uncle and aunt consented—the more easily, perhaps, because, after all, I was not to be alone; my Aunt Vera and two servants were to remain in the town house. Besides, my uncle and his wife were often coming back for a day or two at a time, and I promised to pass all my Sundays with them. This arrangement suited me perfectly. My Aunt Vera, my dead father’s sister, was the sweetest and gentlest of women, an invalid, with an infinite tenderness for Serge and myself, the orphans of her favourite brother. The servants also, an old nurse and a gardener, were entirely devoted to my family and to me. I was therefore free, mistress of the house, of my time, of myself. Divided between my studies, a few visits paid and received, and my weekly trip to Moroznoië, my life flowed peacefully, monotonously enough—on the surface.
“WE ARE BETRAYED!”
Down deep, alas! it was not the same. Our revolutionary group was being harried by the police, and their arrests and domiciliary visits were conducted with so much skill and certainty, we were forced to believe at last that we were betrayed by a traitor or a spy among our own numbers. Strictly watched by the police, who kept us “moving on,” avoided on that account by some of our friends, and knowing perfectly well that a single false step might bring ruin not only upon ourselves, but upon many others, we were obliged to be extremely cautious, and not to meet too often. A few furtive interviews now and again for the interchange of news, a few sparsely attended rendezvous for the purpose of keeping the threads of our organisation together, were pretty nearly all that we thought safe to permit ourselves. This mode of life—so tranquil to outward appearance, but in reality so full of anxiety for each and all; a life without a to-morrow, so that when we parted we did not know whether we should ever meet again, and it became our habit to say Adieu instead of Au revoir—lasted for me about five months. Melancholy enough, indeed, it had notwithstanding a charm of its own, a charm that sprang partly, perhaps, from the consciousness of dangers incurred for a noble object, and from the feeling of grave moral responsibility that we all had. A few episodes of that time are deeply fixed in my memory. A meeting we held one evening at twilight in a rich park near the town, a park that belonged to a high personage at the Imperial Court, whose son was one of us. There we met and whispered, and the murmur of the leaves overhead and the deepening shadows of the nightfall lent an intense colour of poetry to the situation. And then another meeting, in the poor little lodging of a factory-operative—a special meeting, called because our suspicions of treason within our own ranks had centred now upon a certain individual, a student, a college friend of my cousins, a constant visitor at our house. At this meeting a plan was adopted to test our suspect, and prove whether or not he was the guilty man. I, the next time he called, was to put him on a false scent; I was to tell him that a reunion of Nihilists would be held at a given place and a given time; and then we would await developments. I was also to draw him out, if possible, and make him convict himself from his own mouth. But this I could not do. I put him on the false scent; but I couldn’t draw him out. It is terrible to hold the life of a human being between your hands, even though that human being be the basest of cowards and traitors.