Short Fiction, Leonid Andreyev [good e books to read .TXT] 📗

man, be responsible for such an order? That is the question, honoured sir! The people are not chickens! The people are sacred! And if you could understand the masses and their sufferings, you would go out into that same Square, bow yourself humbly to the earth and beg for forgiveness.

“Think, from generation to generation⁠—from kindred to kindred, since that time of the first slaves, who, at the bidding of their tyrannical princes built the Pyramids, we have led this existence! As there are among you hereditary nobles⁠—that is, oppressors⁠—so among us there are hereditary labourers, hereditary slaves. And consider further, that in all these ages we have been only beaten and oppressed, and as far back into the past as I can trace my ancestry I see nothing but tears, despair, ill-treatment. And all this is stamped upon the soul⁠—and all this has been kept as the sole heritage, from father to son, from mother to daughter. Attempt to look into the soul of a simple peasant or labourer⁠—a shuddering horror! While we are yet unborn we have suffered a thousand wrongs. When we finally crawl forth into life we stumble into a sort of cavern, where we are nourished on wrongs and clothe ourselves in our wrongs!

“They tell me that somewhere, five years ago, you ordered the knout for the peasants⁠—do you realise what you did then? You thought you had only flayed their backs. No, you stripped their souls, enslaved for ages. You flogged the dead, and the yet unborn! And though you may be a General and an Excellency⁠—yet I make bold to say you are not fit to lay your lips in adoration on one of those sacred peasant backs, much less to lay the lash!

“And when the workmen came to you, who was it, do you think, who came?⁠ ⁠… Those were the slaves who built the Pyramids⁠—they rose and came with their thousands of years of chafings and groans, to ask for kindness, for help, for counsel! Came to you, as to an enlightened and humane man of the twentieth century. And how did you treat them? Ah! You!⁠ ⁠… Your forefather perhaps was an overseer over these same slaves and beat them with stripes, and then handed down to you this foolish hatred for the working classes!

“Honoured Sir! The masses are awakening. At present they are only turning in their sleep, and already the pillars in your house are tottering; but wait till they are quite awake. These words of mine are new to you⁠—think them over!⁠ ⁠… Furthermore, I ask your pardon that I have troubled you so long, and in the name of the ‘Brotherhood,’ I hope they may not kill you.”⁠—

“They will kill me, though,” thought the Governor, as he folded up the letter. For an instant the picture of old Jegor, with his steel-grey hair, rose in his mind, only to vanish in the boundless darkness of its void.

No vestige of thought was left in him, nothing either of contradiction or of assent. He stood by the burnt-out stove⁠—on the table the lamp glowed under its green silk shade⁠—in another room his daughter was playing the piano; someone seemed to be teasing her Excellency’s pug, for he began to bark viciously⁠—and still the lamp burned.⁠ ⁠…

The lamp burned!

VII

In the next few days no letters came. The sendings stopped abruptly, as by preconcerted action, and the silence that followed held something sinister and unusual. The sudden cessation gave the feeling that the end was not yet come, that somewhere in the void something was taking its course; that a new phase had entered into the Thought, and was shaping things in secret. And time sped by, with a swoop of its mighty pinions⁠—each upward swing a day, each downward sweep a night!

Twice the Pike had interviewed her Excellency at a most unusual hour. He scolded the man in the anteroom who helped him off with his coat, rowing him in energetic whispers as though he were one of his own policemen, or a cabby. And when the coat was off and he was drawing on his fresh white gloves, he bent his sleek head condescendingly to the fellow’s side-whiskers, gnashed his musty-tobacco-stained teeth, and held his half-gloved hand, with fingers dangling limp, close over his nose. (He always did this at the slightest contact with a lackey.)⁠ ⁠… Then, assuming the manner of a man of the world, he mounted the stairs.

Formerly he would never have dared to scold the Governor’s servants, but now things were come to such a pass that he not only did, but must. Last night a highly suspicious character had been arrested by one of the secret agents, close to the entrance of the palace! At a distance he had followed the Governor on his accustomed morning stroll; then had hung about the palace all day, peering in at the basement windows, hiding behind the trees, and conducting himself in a most suspicious manner. On his arrest they found neither weapons, papers, nor any other treasonable articles about him; and they recognised him as the suburbanite Ipatikoff⁠—furrier by trade. His statements were vague and shifty. He asserted that he had only passed the house once, and seemed to be hiding something. On searching his quarters they found but a few rotten skins, a boy’s fur coat unfinished, and other appurtenances of his trade. Household goods there were none⁠—no weapons, no papers. The case seemed in the highest degree mysterious. None of the Governor’s household⁠—the lodge-keeper nor anyone else⁠—had observed him, though he had passed the main entrance at least a dozen times.

In the night a spy tried the door to test the matter and, finding it unlocked, walked into the porter’s lodge, scratched his name on the wall as a proof of his presence, and then walked out again unnoticed. The gatekeeper pleaded forgetfulness as his excuse for not locking up.⁠ ⁠… “But at such a time, when such an attempt was to be expected, that sort