The White Terror and The Red. Abraham Cahan

that their estates lay in neighbouring provinces in Little Russia. They were preceded by a slender youth of eighteen in a broad-brimmed straw hat and a clean-shaven elderly little man in one of soft grey felt. These were Prince Pavel Alexeyevich Boulatoff, a son of the countess by a former marriage, and Alexandre Alexandrovich Pievakin, his private tutor, as well as one of his instructors at the gymnasium[A] of his native town. Pavel’s straw hat was too sedate for his childish face and was pushed down so low that a delicately sculptured chin and mouth and the turned up tip of a rudely hewn Russian nose was all one could see under its vast expanse of yellow brim. The old man knew no German and this was his first trip abroad, so his high-born pupil, who had an advantage over him in both these respects, was explaining things to him, with an air at once patronising and respectful. Presently Pavel interrupted himself.

      “The Czar!” he whispered, in a flutter. “The Czar!” he repeated over his shoulder, addressing himself to his mother.

      Pievakin raised his glance, paling as he did so, but was so overawed by the sight that he forthwith dropped his eyes, a sickly expression on his lips.

      When the men came face to face with their monarch they made way and snatched off their hats as if they were on fire. Countess Varoff, Pavel’s mother, curtseyed deeply, her flaccid insignificant little body retreating toward the side of the promenade and then sinking to the ground; while the Polish woman proceeded on her way stiffly without so much as a nod of her head. The Czar returned the greeting of the Russian woman gallantly and disappeared in the rear of them.

      The group walked on in nervous silence, the two women now in the lead. When they reached a deserted spot the youth suddenly flushed a violent red, and, thrusting out his finely chiselled chin at his mother, he said, in quick pugnacious full-toned accents as out of keeping with his boyish figure as his hat:

      “Mother, you are not going to keep up acquaintance with a person who has offered an insult to our Czar.”

      “Paul! What has come over you?” the countess stammered out, colouring abjectly as she paused.

      “I mean just what I say, mother.”

      The elderly little man by his side looked on sheepishly, the cold sweat standing in beads on his forehead.

      “Don’t mind this wild boy, I beg of you,” Anna Nicolayevna said to the Polish woman. “Don’t pay the least attention to him. He imagines himself a full grown man, but he is merely a silly boy and he gives me no end of trouble. Don’t take it ill, ma chère.” She rattled it off in a great flurry of embarrassment, straining the boy back tenderly, while she was condemning him.

      “I don’t take it ill at all,” Pani Oginska answered tremulously. “He’s perfectly right. Your acquaintance has been a great pleasure to me, countess, but I can see that my company at this place would be very inconvenient to you. Adieu!”

      She walked off toward a row of new cottages, and Anna Nicolayevna, the countess, stood gazing after her like one petrified.

      “You are a savage, Pasha,” she whispered, in Russian.

      “Why am I? I have done what is right, and you feel it as well as I do,” he returned hotly, in his sedate, compact, combative voice, looking from her to his teacher. When he was excited he sputtered out his sentences in volleys, growling at his listener and seemingly about to flounce off. This was the way he spoke now. “Why am I a savage? Can you afford to associate with a woman who will behave in this impudent, in this rebellious manner toward the Czar? Can you, now?”

      “That’s neither here nor there,” she said, with irritation, as they resumed their walk. “She is a very unhappy creature. All that she holds dear has been taken from her. Her husband was hanged during the Polish rebellion and now her son, a college student, has been torn from her and is dying in prison of consumption. If you were not so heartless you would have some pity on her.”

      “Her husband was hanged and her son is in prison and you wish to associate with her! Do you really? What do you think of it, Alexandre Alexandrovich?”

      “A very painful incident,” Pievakin murmured, wretchedly.

      “As if I were eager for her company,” she returned, timidly. “As if one could help the chance acquaintances that fall into one’s way while travelling. Besides, she is no rebel. Indeed, she is one of the most charming women I ever met, and to hear her story is enough to break a heart of stone. You have no sympathy, Pasha.”

      “She is no rebel! Why, if she did in Russia what she did here a minute ago she would be hustled off to Siberia in short order, and it would serve her right, too. And because I don’t want my mother to go with such a person I have no sympathy.”

      “Pardon me, Anna Nicolayevna,” Pievakin interposed, with embarrassed ardour, “but if I were you I should keep out of her way. She is an unfortunate woman, but, God bless her—Pasha is right, I think.”

      “I should say I was,” the boy said, triumphantly. “She wouldn’t dare do such a thing in Russia, would she? But then in Russia a woman of that sort would have no chance to do anything of the kind. Oh, I do hate the Germans for exposing the Czar to these insults. It is simply terrible, terrible. Couldn’t they arrange it so that he should not have to rub shoulders with every Tom, Dick and Harry and be exposed to every sort of affront? And yet when I say so I am a savage and have no heart.” He gnashed his teeth and burst into tears.

      “Hush, dear, I didn’t mean it. Don’t be excited, now.”

      “But you did mean it; you know you did.”

      “Sh, calm down, Pasha,” the old man besought him, and Pavel’s features softened.

      Alexandre Alexandrovich was the only teacher at the high school of whom Pavel was fond. He was an old-fashioned little man, with cravats of a former generation and with features and movements which conveyed the impression that he was forever making ready to bow. His cackling good humour when the recitations were correct and fluent, his distressed air when they were not; his mixed timidity and quick temper—these things are recalled with fond smiles in Miroslav. He was attached to both his subjects and when put on his mettle by the attention of his class he really knew how to put life into the dullest lesson. On such occasions his timid manner would disappear, and he would draw himself up, and go strutting back and forth with long, defiant steps and hurling out his sentences like a domineering rooster. It was only when a lesson of this sort was suddenly disturbed by some sally from a scapegrace of a pupil that Pievakin would fly into a passion and then he would take to jumping about, tearing at his own hair, and groaning as though with physical pain.

      Pavel was perhaps the most ardent friend Alexandre Alexandrovich had in all Miroslav. The young prince was in a singular position at the gymnasium. Somehow things were always done in a way to make one remember that he was Prince Boulatoff and a nephew of the governor of the province of which Miroslav was the capital. He was the only boy who usually came to school in a carriage and it seemed as though the imposing vehicle had the effect of isolating him from the other boys. As to his teachers, they took a peculiar tone with him—one of ill-concealed reverence which would betray itself with all the more emphasis when they tried to take him to task. The upshot was that most of the other pupils, including the only other prince in the class (who was also the wildest boy in it) kept out of Pavel’s way, while those who did not treated him with a servility that was even more offensive to him than the aloofness of the rest. He had made several attempts to get on terms of good fellowship with two or three of the boys he liked, but his own effort to laugh and frolic with them had jarred on him like a false note. He had finally settled down to a manner of haughty reticence, keeping an observant eye on his classmates and finding a peculiar pleasure in these silent observations.

      The only two teachers who did not indulge him were Pievakin and the teacher of mathematics, a cheerful hunchback with a pale distended face lit by a pair of comical blue eyes, whom the boys had dubbed “truncated cone.” The teacher of mathematics made Pavel feel his exceptional position by treating him with special harshness.