The White Terror and The Red. Abraham Cahan

not cry, Kostia, or you know what I am going to call you.” Whereupon Kostia would make a desperate effort to look nonchalantly grave and Pavel would burst into a new roar of merriment.

      Anna Nicolayevna came back converted to a rigorous point of view, and although her son had no difficulty in convincing her once again that Pievakin deserved mercy, he made up his mind to see his uncle himself, and he did so the very next morning.

      Governor Boulatoff was a massive, worn, blinking old satrap, shrewd, tight-fisted, and, what was quite unusual for a man of his class, with an eye to business. His nose was extremely broad and fleshy, his hair was elaborately dressed, and altogether he looked like a successful old comedian. Bribe-giving was as universal in Miroslav as tipping was in its leading café. One could not turn round without showing “gratitude.” The wheels of government would not move in the desired direction unless they were greased, the price of this “grease” or “gratitude” varying all the way from a ten-copeck piece to ten or fifteen thousand rubles. Governor Boulatoff, who had come to Miroslav a ruined man, was now the largest land-owner in the province. Whenever he was in need of ready cash he would galvanize into a new lease of life some defunct piece of anti-Jewish legislation. This was known among the other officials as “pressing the spring”—the spring of the Jewish pocketbook, that is, the invariable effect of the proceeding being the appearance of a delegation with a snug piece of Jewish “gratitude.” He was continually sneering at the powers behind the throne, and mildly striving for recognition; yet so comfortable did he feel in this city of gardens, card-playing and “gratitude,” from which “the Czar was too far off and God too high up,” that he was in mortal fear lest the promotion which he coveted should come in the form of a transfer to a more important province.

      Pavel found him in his imposing “den.” The old potentate was in his morning gown, freshly bathed, shaved and coiffured and smelling of pomade and cigarette smoke.

      “Well, my little statesman,” he greeted him in French. “What brings you so early this morning? Aren’t you going to school at all?” He called him statesman because of his ambition to follow in the footsteps of his diplomatic grandfather.

      “I shall stay away from the first three lessons,” Pavel answered. “I cannot rest, uncle. I want to speak to you about that unfortunate man.”

      The governor was very fond of Pavel, but he persisted in treating him as a boy, and the only serious talk young Boulatoff got out of him regarding Pievakin was an exhortation to give “men of that sort a wide berth.”

      “But, uncle——”

      “Don’t argue,” the governor interrupted him, blinking as he spoke. “This is not the kind of thing for a boy of your station to get mixed up in.”

      “Oh, it’s enough to drive one crazy. The poor man is sincerely repentant, uncle. He’ll never do it again, uncle.”

      “I see you’re quite excited over it. Just the kind of effect fellows of that stamp will have on the mind of a boy. This is just where the danger comes in. Don’t forget your name, Pasha. Come, throw it all out of your clever little head. There’s a good boy.”

      “Uncle darling, he’ll never do it again. Let him stay where he is.”

      “You’re a foolish boy. Whether he’ll do it again or no, his very presence in this town would be a source of danger. Whoever sets his eyes on him will say to himself: ‘Here is the man who once talked of the way people live under a constitution.’ So you see he’ll be a reminder of unlawful ideas. We have no use for fellows of this sort. They are like living poison. Do you see the point? Let your teacher thank his stars the case was not put in the hands of the gendarmes entirely, or he would be sent to a colder place.”

      All this the governor said in the playful manner of one conversing with a child and, by way of clinching the matter, he explained that he had nothing to do with the case and that it was under the jurisdiction of the “curator of educational district.”

      Pavel was in despair and his being treated as a boy threw him into a rage, but he held himself in check for Pievakin’s sake.

      “Oh, the curator will do anything you ask of him, uncle,” he said in a tone of entreaty and resentment at once.

      “You don’t want your uncle to write letters begging for a fellow who was foolish enough to get mixed up in such an affair as that, do you? I used to think you really cared for your uncle.”

      Pavel contracted his forehead and put out his chin sullenly.

CHAPTER IV.

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THE “DEMONSTRATION.”

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      AT the hour of Pievakin’s departure the Miroslav railway station was crowded with gymnasium pupils of both sexes, but Pavel was not among them. He had not been informed that such a gathering was in contemplation at all.

      Alexandre Alexandrovich, a satchel slung across his breast, wan and haggard, but flushed with excitement, was bustling about in a listless, mechanical way. He was accompanied by his large family and the teacher of mathematics. A number of gendarmes, stalwart, bewhiskered, elaborately formidable, were pacing up and down the large waiting room. The gendarmerie is the political police of the Czar. It forms a special military organisation quite distinct from the police proper. A detail of such gendarmes, proportionate to the importance of the place, is to be found in every railroad station of the country. On this occasion, however, the presence of the gendarmes seemed to have some special bearing upon the nature of the scene. They were all big strapping fellows. Their jingling spurs, red epaulets and icy silence belonged to the same category of things as the terrible political prisons of Kharkoff and St. Petersburg; as the clinking of convict-chains, as the frozen wastes of Siberia.

      All at once most of the bespurred men disappeared. After an absence of two or three minutes they came back, considerably re-enforced.

      “All gymnasium pupils, ladies and gentlemen, will please leave the station,” they called out.

      About one-half of the throng struck out for the doors as if the place were on fire. Some fifteen or twenty pupils stood still, frowning upon the guardians of the Czar’s safety, in timid defiance. The rest, a crowd of about two hundred, made a lunge in the direction of the corner where Alexandre Alexandrovich and his family were pottering about some light baggage, when three lusty gendarmes planted themselves in front of the little old man.

      “Go home, ladies and gentlemen, go home!” Pievakin besought his friends, waving his hands and stamping his feet desperately.

      “Have we no right to say good-bye to our own teacher?” one boy ventured.

      “Not allowed!” a gendarme answered, sternly. “Get out, get out!”

      The crowd surged back; but at this point a young feminine voice, sonorous with indignation and distress, rose above the din of the scramble:

      “Good heavens! Can it be that we shall leave without saying good-bye to our dear teacher? All they say of him is a lie, a malicious lie. They’re a lot of knaves, and he is the best man in the world. Let them arrest us if they will, let them kill us. It would be a shame if we went away like traitors to our dear teacher.”

      The rest was lost in a hubbub of shouts and shrieks. In their effort to get at the speaker, who was shielded by the other pupils, the gendarmes were beating young women with their sheathed swords or pulling them by the hair. With the exception of a few who had skulked out through back doors, the young people now all stood their ground, ready to fight.

      “Arrest us all!” they yelled. “We all say the same thing.”

      “Yes,