The White Terror and The Red Part 25

CHAPTER XXIV.

VLADIMIR FINDS HIS CAUSE.

The next morning, as Clara walked along Kasimir Street, she saw Volodia Vigdoroff, her cousin, talking and laughing exuberantly to two elderly men in front of the flashy window of a drug store. One of his listeners wore a military uniform. It was Dr. Lipnitzky (Jewish physicians had not yet been proscribed from the Russian army)--a grey-haired, smooth-shaven, pudgy little man with three medals across his breast. It was at the Turkish war that he had won these decorations. Clara could never look at him without feeling a taste of sickness in her mouth like the one she had felt one day shortly after the war, when she was sick in bed and the little doctor, bending over, shouted to her to open her mouth wider. The best physician in town, he was the terror of his uneducated co-religionists. When a Jewish housewife paid him his fee in copper instead of silver, or neglected to wrap it up in paper, he would make an ugly scene, asking the poor woman at the top of his voice when she and others like her would learn to live like human beings.

Sometimes, when a family failed to pay him altogether, pleading poverty, he would call them a lot of prevaricating knaves with a snug little h.o.a.rd in the old woman's stocking, and carry off a copper pan or bra.s.s candlestick. In every case of this sort, however, the pan or the bra.s.s candlestick was sure to come back, sometimes with a ruble or two into the bargain.

The other man to whom Vigdoroff was speaking was Paul Zundel, the musical autocrat of the province. He was as small of stature and as irascible as Dr. Lipnitzky--a grey-haired dandy with a Mexican complexion and a pair of long black side whiskers tipped with white. He was a graduate of a German conservatory and spoke several languages with illiterate fluency.

They were both bachelors and both were frequent visitors at the governor's house, where they were liked as much for the money they usually lost in cards (although in other houses they were known as sharp players) as for their professional services. They spent large sums on the education of Jewish children and were particularly interested in the spread of modern culture among their people. In other words, they advocated and worked for the a.s.similation of their people with the "deep-rooted" population. When a Talmud boy was ambitious to give up his divine studies for "Gentile books" and his old-fas.h.i.+oned garb for a gymnasium uniform, the two eccentric bachelors were his two stars of hope.

Vigdoroff overtook Clara as she turned the next corner. They had not met since the night when they quarrelled in front of Boyko's court.

"I didn't see you until I happened to turn round," he said.

"He is trying to prove that he is not afraid of being seen in my company," she thought to herself, as she said aloud: "I saw you talking to Dr. Lipnitzky and Zundel."

They walked in silence a few steps. Then he uttered with a smile:

"Have you taken a vow to give us a wide berth?"

"Not at all."

"Father and mother are always at me for it. They think I am to blame for your sudden estrangement."

"n.o.body is to blame, and there is no estrangement. Why use such words?"

"Is it only a matter of words? They are accustomed to look upon you and me as brother and sister. Do you deny that our roads have parted?"

"If they have, then, what need is there of writing at the bottom of the picture: 'This is a lion?'" she asked testily. "If it's a lion it's a lion."

"Would it be better to shut one's eyes to the truth? As for me, common ordinary mortal that I am, I try to call a spade a spade."

He spoke with venom, but it was all perfunctory and they were both aware of it. Then he described, with exaggerated ardour, the successes achieved by the Pupils' Aid Society in which he was now actively interested.

Since their talk on the bench in front of Boyko's Court he had been longing for some humanitarian cause, for one una.s.sociated with the hazards of the revolutionary movement. He would prove to Clara that he was no inferior creature. Her taunt that he had seized upon the Jewish question, in the course of their debate, merely as a drowning man seizes at a straw, and the implication that no phase of the problem of human suffering made the slightest appeal to him had left a cruel sting in his heart. Since then his thoughts had often turned upon the Jewish question, until he found his "cause" in the dissemination of Russian culture among his people. Formerly he had been contented with being "a.s.similated" himself. Now he was going to dedicate his best energies to the work of lessening that distance between Jew and Gentile, which was, so he argued, the source of all the woes of his race. As good luck would have it, there was such a thing as difference of opinion. "It is not anxiety about my 'precious skin,'" he would picture himself saying to Clara, "that keeps me from reading underground prints. Did I believe in them I should do as you do. But if you think I live for myself only you don't know me. I have another cause, one to which my convictions call me and to which I am going to give all that is in me."

"And you?" he asked. "Still planting a paradise on earth?"

She smiled.

"Well, as for me, I content myself with working on such a humble beginning as a little bridge across the gap between Jew and Gentile."

He consciously led the way past a Gentile of enormous bulk, who stood in the doorway of a furrier's shop. It was Rasgadayeff, the landlord of the Vigdoroffs' residence, he himself occupying the inner building on the same courtyard. He was a wealthy merchant with the figure of a barrel and arms that looked as though they had been hung up to dry, an impetuous Great-Russian, illiterate and good-hearted, shrewd in making money, but with no sense of its value when it came to spending it. Every other week he went off on a hideous spree, and then, besides smas.h.i.+ng costly mirrors, which is the cla.s.sical sport of the drunken Great-Russian merchant, he would indulge in such pastimes as offering a prize to every ten-year-old boy who would drain a tumbler of vodka, setting fire to live horses or wrecking the furniture in his own house.

On such days his wife often sought shelter with the Vigdoroffs for fear of being beaten to death. Until a few years ago he had stood at the head of the fur trade. Since then a Jewish dealer, who went off on no sprees, had been a formidable compet.i.tor to him. Rasgadayeff now hated Jews in general as he had never done before. The Vigdoroffs were an exception. He was sincerely fond of the whole family, and entrusted the old man with some of his most important business secrets.

"Our humblest regards to Clara Rodionovna!" he said, with gay suavity, taking off his hat. "As also to Vladimir Alexandrovich!"

They returned the salute, and were about to pa.s.s on, but he checked them.

"A rose of a girl, I tell you that," he went on, addressing himself to Vladimir, while he looked at the girl with rather offensive admiration.

"Young men are fools nowadays. If I were one of them I should take no chances with a la.s.sie like that. A plum, a bouquet, a song-bird of a mademoiselle. I should propose and get her and waste no time, or--one, two, three, and the lovey-dovey may be snapped up by some other fellow."

Clara, who was accustomed to this sort of pleasantry from him, scarcely heard what he said. She was smilingly making ready to bow herself away, when her cousin asked of the Great-Russian:

"And how is her Ill.u.s.triousness? Have you seen her lately?"

"She was here yesterday. Quite stuck on you, Vladimir Alexandrovich.

Sends humblest regards. 'When is your learned young friend going to call,' she says. You have a sage of a cousin, Clara Rodionovna, an eagle of a fellow, a cabinet minister!"

"All right," Vladimir returned, with an amused smile, yet reddening with satisfaction.

Clara remarked to herself that her cousin was flaunting his successes with Gentiles before her. When they resumed their walk she inquired reluctantly:

"Who is 'her Ill.u.s.triousness'?"

"Oh, that's that lame tramp of a woman, Princess Chertogoff," he rejoined, with gestures of contempt and amus.e.m.e.nt, yet inwardly tingling with vanity at his acquaintance with her impecunious "Ill.u.s.triousness."

The wealthy Great-Russian was a large holder of Princess Chertogoff's promissory notes, and it was at his house where Vladimir had met her on several occasions. The lame n.o.blewoman knew that Rasgadayeff was fond of the Vigdoroffs. When she saw the young man last she had, by way of currying favour with her creditor, asked the educated son of his "favourite Jew" to call on her whenever he was in the mood for it, and to "let her hear what was going on among wise men and authors."

Vladimir and Clara pa.s.sed on. He spoke of Rasgadayeff's latest escapades and Clara listened with little bursts of merriment, but their voices did not ring true. Presently they exchanged greetings with Ginsburg, the notorious money-lender of Miroslav, a small, red-headed man with crumpled cheeks and big bulging eyes.

"Here is another treat for you!" Vladimir said, in high spirits.

"Another specimen of moral perfection. Some gigantic hand must have grabbed him by the head, squeezing it like a paper ball till the eyes started from their sockets, and then thrown him into a waste basket.

That's the way he looks." She smiled awkwardly.

He then called her attention to two bewigged old women, both of them apparently deaf, who were talking into each other's ear, and then to the picturesque figure of a dumpy little shoemaker with a new, carefully-s.h.i.+ned pair of topboots in his hand. Clara had never been interested in things of this sort, but this time, in her eagerness to get away, added to a growing sense of awkwardness, his observations literally grated on her nerves. At last, when they reached a crossing, she stopped, putting out her hand.

"Somebody is waiting for me," she said. "Remember me to uncle and aunt, will you?"

"I will. Won't you look in at all?" As she turned to take the side street, he added: "Our roads do part, then."

Her appointment was with Orlovsky. She had not attended the gatherings of the Circle at his house for a considerable time. He conjectured that she was engaged in some revolutionary undertaking of importance. He had missed her so abjectly that he had finally decided to avow his love.

This was what he had made the appointment for. When she came, however, he cowed before her rich complexion and intelligent eyes and talked of the affairs of the Circle. A similar attempt at a love declaration was made that evening by Elkin, with similar results. By way of opening the conversation he indulged in a series of virulent taunts upon her long absence and the great revolutionary secrets that he said were written on her face, after which his efforts to turn the conversation into romantic channels proved futile. He came away agonised with jealousy. He was jealous of the girl and he was jealous of the mysterious conspiracy in which she seemed to be engaged and into which he, her revolutionary sponsor, had not been initiated.

As to Vigdoroff, he was seized with a desire to avail himself of Princess Chertogoff's invitation, not merely to gratify his personal ambition, but also, so he a.s.sured himself, as part of his "cause." On his way thither he paused once or twice in front of shop windows to ascertain whether his face was not strikingly Semitic. "Not offensively so, anyhow," he concluded before a mirror at the entrance to a furniture store. The mirror reflected a well-made, athletic-looking young man one could have told for a college man through a veil. The picturesque irregularity of his features, somewhat flat in the middle of the face, drew an image of culture, of intellectual interest. He felt on his mettle. He would make a favourable impression, and that impression was to be another step across the distance not only between Gentile society and himself, but between all Jews and all Gentiles. His visit to the n.o.blewoman was a mission. He was in an exalted mood.

At the house of Princess Chertogoff he found a cavalry officer and an officer of the imperial guards. He was received with patronising urbanity. The hostess introduced the two young officers as her sons, come from St. Petersburg to take a glimpse at their old mother, and Vigdoroff as "one of the brilliant young intellects of our town." This was her excuse before her sons for having invited a Jew to the house and Vigdoroff was not unaware of it. The cavalryman's face was round and stern, while his brother's was oblong and smiling. When they were drunk, which happened quite often, their faces would swap expressions. It was chiefly owing to their expensive escapades that their mother's fortune had pa.s.sed into the coffers of usurers. The two uniformed men left almost immediately, pleading a pressing engagement.

The welcome Vladimir found at this house was one extended by a patroness of the fine arts to a devotee of letters. It was not long before Vigdoroff found himself fully launched on a favourite subject. Russia's supremacy in modern literature and her false modesty became clearer to him with every new work of fiction that came from the foreign masters.

The best models of the German, French or English novel were tainted with artificiality. Russia alone produced stories that were absolutely free from powder and rouge. He dwelt on Zola's _L'a.s.sommoir_ and Daudet's _Nabob_, both of which had appeared a short time before, and each of which was looked upon as its author's masterpiece. He saw that his hostess neither understood nor cared for these things; that he was making a fool of himself; yet, being too ill at ease to stop, he went sliding down hill. He spoke by heart as it were, the sound of his own voice increasing his embarra.s.sment.

The princess was listening with an air of pompous a.s.sent, barely following the general drift of his talk. Her majestic crutches terrified him.

A man servant brought in a silver samovar and a tray of Little-Russian cookies. As Vigdoroff took up his gla.s.s of tea the princess said: