One week after the explosion the Czar signed a decree which practically placed the government in the hands of a Supreme Executive Commission--a body especially created to cope with the situation and whose head, Count Loris-Melikoff, was invested with all but the powers of a regent. Count Melikoff was neither a Slav nor of n.o.ble birth. He was the son of an Armenian merchant. He was a new figure in St. Petersburg, and when his carriage pa.s.sed along the Neva Prospect his swarthy face with its striking Oriental features were pointed out with expressions of perplexity. Although one of the two princ.i.p.al heroes of the late war with Turkey and recently a governor-general of Kharkoff, he was looked upon as an upstart. The extraordinary powers so suddenly vested in him took the country by surprise.

He was known for the conciliatory policy toward the Nihilists at which he had aimed while he was governor-general of Kharkoff. Accordingly, his promotion to what virtually amounted to dictatorship was universally interpreted as a sign of weakening on the part of Alexander II. Indeed, Melikoff's first p.r.o.nunciamento from the lofty alt.i.tude of his new office struck a note of startling novelty. He spoke of the Czar as showing "increased confidence in his people" and of "public cooperation"

as "the main force capable of a.s.sisting the government in its effort to restore a normal flow of official life"--utterances that were construed into a pledge of public partic.i.p.ation in affairs of state, into an unequivocal hint at representative legislation.

Loris-Melikoff was one of the ablest statesmen Russia had ever produced.

He was certainly the only high official of his time who did not try to prove his devotion to the throne by following in the trodden path of repression. He knew that Russia could not be kept from joining in the march of Western civilisation and he was not going to serve his personal interests by pretending that it could. Instead, he hoped to strengthen his position by winning the Czar over to his own moderate liberalism, by reconciling him to the logic of history. But the logic of history could best have been served by prompt and vigorous action, while the chief of the Supreme Executive Commission was rather slow to move. Nor, indeed, was he free from interference. The Czar was still susceptible to the influence of his unthinking relatives and of his own vindictive nature.

Chaos marked the situation. Loris-Melikoff's first week in office was signalised by the most cruel act in the entire history of the government's struggle against Nihilism. A gymnasium boy, seventeen years old (a Jew), was hanged in Kieff for carrying a revolutionary proclamation. The dictator's professions of liberalism were branded as hypocrisy.

CHAPTER XI.

A MYSTERIOUS ARREST.

A young man had been seized with seditious publications. It was the first political arrest in Miroslav, and the report was spreading in a maze of shifting versions. This much seemed certain: the prisoner pretended to be a deaf-mute and so far the gendarmes and the procureur had failed to disclose his ident.i.ty. The local newspaper dared not publish the remotest allusion to the matter.

Countess Anna Nicolayevna Varova (Varoff) first heard the news from her brother-in-law, the governor, and although the two belonged to that exceptional minority which usually discussed topics of this character in their normal voices, yet it was in subdued tones that the satrap broached the subject. Anna Nicolayevna offered to send for Pavel, who had recently arrived from St. Petersburg, after an absence of three years, but the governor checked her.

"Never mind, Annette," he said, impatiently, "I've dropped in for a minute or two, in pa.s.sing, don't you know. He called on me yesterday, Pasha. Quite a man. Tell him he must look in again and let me see how clever he is. Quite a man. How time does fly!" Then sinking his voice, he asked: "Have you heard of the fellow they've bagged? One of those youngsters who are scaring St. Petersburg out of its wits, you know."

He gave a laugh and fell to blinking gravely.

"What do you mean, George? Did the gendarmes catch a Nihilist?" she asked, in dismay. "Did they? Bless me! That's all that's wanted. If there is one there must be a whole nest of them." She made a gesture of horror--"But who is he, what is he?"

"That I know no more than you do."

"Well, it's too bad, it's really too bad. I thought Miroslav was immune from that plague at least." And seeing his worried look she added: "I hope it's nothing serious, George."

Governor Boulatoff shook his head. "I don't think it is. Although you never can tell nowadays. You never can tell," he repeated, blinking absently. "The Armenian doesn't seem to be cleaning those fellows out quite so rapidly as one thought he would, does he? They are playing the devil with things, that's what they are doing." "One" and "they"

referred to the Emperor and his advisers.

"Pooh, they'll weary of that parvenu, it's only a matter of time," she consoled him.

The old man proceeded to quote from Loris-Melikoff's recent declarations, which the countess had heard him satirise several times before. "'In the cooperation of the public,'" he declaimed theatrically, "'lies the main force capable of a.s.sisting the government in its effort to restore a normal flow of official life.' Do you understand what all this jugglery means? That we are knuckling down to a lot of ragam.u.f.fins.

It means an official confession that the 'flow of official life' has been checked by a gang of rascally college boys. 'The public is the main force capable of a.s.sisting the government!' Charming, isn't it? Might as well invite 'the public' to be so kind and elect representatives, deputies, or what you may call 'em, start a parliament and have it over with."

Anna Nicolayevna made another attempt to bring the conversation back to the political prisoner, but her visitor was evidently fighting shy of the topic.

"Birch-rods, a good, smart flogging, that's what the public needs," he resumed, pa.s.sionately gnashing his teeth, in response to his own thoughts.

"Oh, don't say that, George. After all, one lives in the nineteenth century."

But this only spurred him on.

The arrest having been ordered from St. Petersburg, the implication was that the presence of the revolutionist in town had escaped the attention of the local authorities. So Governor Boulatoff, who had had no experience in cases of this kind, wondered whether the affair was not likely to affect his own standing. Besides, the governor of Kharkoff had recently been killed, and Boulatoff was asking himself whether the arrest of the unknown man augured the end of his own peace of mind. This he kept to himself, however, and having found some relief in animadverting upon the policy of Loris-Melikoff he took leave.

The countess was left with a pang of sympathy for her brother-in-law.

Not that she had any clear idea of the political situation at which he was forever scoffing and carping. She felt sure that his low spirits were traceable to loneliness, and her compa.s.sion for him revived heart-wringing memories of his dead wife, her sister.

The young prince was out in the garden romping about with Kostia, his half-brother, now a ten-year-old cadet on sick leave. Anna Nicolayevna went to take a look at them through the open window of a rear room. The garden was so jammed with fresh-tinted lilacs, so flooded with their scent, that it seemed like an explosion of color and fragrance. Two Germans were at work with picks and spades. From an invisible spot where a new summer house was being constructed came sounds of sawing and hammering, while the air near the window rang with a mult.i.tudinous twitter of sparrows. Pavel was trying to force Kostia into a wheelbarrow, the boy kicking and struggling silently, and a huge s.h.a.ggy dog barking at Pavel ferociously.

"Come in, Pasha. I want to speak to you," said Anna Nicolayevna.

The return indoors was a race, in which the gigantic dog took part. The convalescent little cadet was beaten.

"Wait till I get well," he said.

"Wait nothing. Your excellency will be rolling along like a water-melon all the same. Good-bye, Monsieur le Water-melon!"

Presently Pavel stood before his mother, mopping his flushed, laughing face.

"Do you remember his 'express trains' in the garden?" he said. "Now it is beneath his dignity, to be sure." He was always trying to prove to himself that the present Kostia and the five-year-old boy he used to fondle five years ago were one and the same person.

"He's right," said the countess. "He's a baby no longer. It's you who are acting like one. Uncle has been here. He was in a hurry, so I didn't send for you." Her serious-minded, intellectual son inspired her with a certain feeling of timidity. She had not the courage to bring up the subject of the political arrest. Her mind was so vague on matters of this kind, while Pavel was apparently so well informed and so profound, she was sure of making a poor showing. So she told herself that it was not a proper topic to discuss in a well-ordered family and kept her own counsel.

"I didn't know he was here," he said.

"Poor man! he seems to be feeling lonely."

Pavel made no reply.

"Why, don't you think he does?"

"What matters it whether I do or not," he said, lightly.

"You haven't a bit of heart, Pasha."

He would not be drawn into conversation, treating everything she said with an inscrutable, somewhat patronising flippancy that nettled her. At last he said he was going out.

"'Looking up old chums' again?" she asked. "And does it mean that you are going to dine out once more?"

"I'll try not to, mother," he answered, with a fond smile in his bright, aggressive eyes.

His small slender figure, beautifully erect, and his upward-tending, frank features haunted her long after he left. She felt like a jealous bride. Otherwise he kept her thoughts tinged with sunshine. A great attachment on quite new terms had sprung up between mother and son since his arrival. At the same time he seemed to belong to a world which she was at a loss to make out. Nor did he appear disinclined to talk of his life in St. Petersburg--a subject upon which she was continually plying him with questions. The trouble was that the questions that beset her mind could no more be formulated than a blind man can formulate his curiosity as to colour. Moreover, all these questions seemed to come crowding upon her when Pavel was away and to vanish the moment she set eyes on him. She told herself that he belonged to a different generation from hers, that it was the everlasting case of "fathers and sons." But this only quickened her jealousy of the "sons" and her despair at being cla.s.sed with the discarded generation. And the keener her jealousy, the deeper was her interest in Pasha.

CHAPTER XII.

A BEWILDERING ENCOUNTER.