“How trying to help?” I said, “Surely not for relieving distress with—”
“Charity?” he broke in bitterly. “No, not that. But for trying to show that it is the injustice of the government which puts them so they need charity. For trying to tell them that if they straighten up, the czar can no more put his yoke on their necks. For that, not for charity.” He picked up the violin, struck a few notes with his fingers, and added, “The Americans do not understand us.”
“Excuse me,” I said humbly, “I presume that this is true. I have never met a nihilist before.”
“No?” This time the smile was full of amusement. “I must have frightened you, then.”
“Oh, no,” I said, lying with much courtesy. “I have been very much interested, so much that I have neglected my errand.” And I proceeded to engage his services, which was soon done, though inwardly I reflected that for a man in such quarters his price was rather high.
It was darkening, but the snow still gave a luminous whiteness to the dusk as he accompanied me to the door, saying: “Well, I hope you are not afraid of me. You would like us better if you knew us better. You ought to read Bakunin—do you read Shelley? He is the greatest English poet, but almost no one understands him. He lived five hundred years too soon. Will you shake hands? I never killed anyone. Thank you. I shall be exactly on time at the concert.”
And he was. The virtues of the Russian character, like its vices, are mathematically calculable; every act answers the question why. Hence punctuality is assured.
This happened several years ago; since then I have met so many nihilists whom the persecution of the Jews has driven out of Russia within the last ten years, and found them all so much like other people that the word has lost all its terrors. Just now there comes before my eyes the quiet face of the little woman with large blue eyes, who sat in my study one morning, and in the most placid voice related how, as a child, she had carried messages across the city from one of the dreaded terrorists to another, without molestation, because, as she said in her queer English, “the police would not expect a child”; and again, when the officers had searched the house, she had lain with the prohibited books under her pillow, “because, even they are polite, more or less, and will not come into a girl’s room if she is in bed, unless they expect her very much.”
This she had done because of a much-loved brother, an ardent nihilist, and quite without the knowledge of her father, himself a public official.
Not long ago she returned to Russia, and I sometimes wonder if, escaping the famine and plague, she may yet travel the long way to the Siberian prisons.
Of these so much has lately been written, of their loneliness, their deprivations, their inaccessibility, that one would say the word despair must finally be written on the heart of him who enters there.
Yet I have met one who escaped even from there; one who had scaled the fearful walls of the Russian prison, crossed the lonely deserts of snow, through the passes of the Altai mountains, and finally reached Japan from which he sailed to America. One would naturally expect something bold, daring, shrewd, or strongly self-assertive in the person of the man who had accomplished such miracles. But none of these are evident in this short, stoutish, sandy-complexioned, curly-haired fellow, with the prominent nose and jaw of the Slavic races. Very quiet, very much averse to talking even with his friends, but absolutely impenetrable to strangers, and much given to pessimistic contemplation. I should not be surprised to learn that he had committed suicide, for he is woefully disappointed in America, being wholly unfit for its sharp commercial push and scramble.
Not so with my young friend, the medical student, a person of surprisingly quick intellect and disputatious inclinations. After delivering her letter of introduction to me one summer afternoon, she commenced an attack on an inoffensive Y.M.C.A. member who chanced to be present, and speedily drove him into a corner concerning the existence of God. She next disposed of the marriage problem, Henry George’s land-tax scheme, the advisability of eating meat, of women wearing short hair and a pantaloonish substitute for skirts, each in “one round.” The expression is apropos; mentally speaking, she has on boxing gloves all the time, and is ready to spar on any known subject with the greatest mental athlete. She has a romantic history. The child of orthodox Jewish parents who forbade her all education, she naturally rebelled, and, to escape them, married at the age of eighteen a young nihilist, passionately devoted to her, but whose affection she but faintly reciprocated.
The marriage, however, was a compromise with authority to make her way to America, a female minor being subject to her father, if unmarried, and to her husband, if married.
Neither her husband nor herself believed in the binding efficacy of any ceremony, however; and after two years of wedlock she concluded to take up life alone. She had been swept into the storm of struggle between living with a husband she did not love, for his sake, or obeying her desire to live alone and be free.
I fancy it was a little hard for M. to give up the woman he so dearly loved, though he did believe in perfect liberty.
However, he did it with tolerable grace, and they greet one another as mere comrades now. He
