Condemned as a Nihilist: A Story of Escape from Siberia

"It is of no use your attempting to struggle," one of the men said, "there is an escort riding beside the sledge, and a dozen more behind it. There is no chance of a rescue, and I warn you you had best not open your lips; if you do, we will gag you."

Godfrey was still half bewildered with the suddenness of the transaction. What had he been seized for? Who were the men who had got hold of him? and why were they gripping his wrists so tightly? He had heard of arbitrary treatment in the Russian army, but that a colonel should have a captain seized in this extraordinary way merely because he was absent from his post without leave was beyond anything he thought possible.

"I thought I was going to have the laugh all on my side," he said to himself, "but so far it is all the other way." In ten minutes the carriage stopped for a moment, there was a challenge, then some gates were opened. Godfrey had already guessed his destination, and his feeling of discomfort had increased every foot he went. There was no doubt he was being taken to the fortress. "It seems to me that Miss Katia has got me into a horrible scrape of some kind," he said to himself. "What a fool I was to let myself be humbugged by the girl in that way!"

Two men with lanterns were at the door of a building, at which the carriage, after passing into a large court-yard, drew up. Still retaining their grip on his wrists, two of the men walked beside him down a passage, while several others followed behind. An officer of high rank was sitting at the head of a table, one of inferior rank stood beside him, while at the end of the table were two others with papers and pens before them.

"So you have captured him!" the general said eagerly.

"Yes, your excellency," the man who had spoken to Godfrey in the carriage said respectfully.

"Has he been searched?"

"No, your excellency, the distance was so short, and I feared that he might wrench one of his hands loose. Moreover, I thought that you might prefer his being searched in your presence."

"It is better so. Take off that disguise." As the hat and mask were removed the officer sprang to his feet and exclaimed, "Why, who is this? This is not the man you were ordered to arrest; you have made some confounded blunder."

"I assure you, your excellency," the official said in trembling accents, "this is the only man who was there in the disguise we were told of. There, your excellency, is the bunch of white and red ribbons on his cloak."

"And who are you, sir?" the general thundered.

"My name, sir, is Godfrey Bullen. I reside with Ivan Petrovytch, a merchant living in the Vassili Ostrov."

"But how come you mixed up in this business, sir?" the general exclaimed furiously. "How is it that you are thus disguised, and that you are wearing that bunch of ribbon? Beware how you answer me, sir, for this is a matter which concerns your life."

"So far as I am concerned, sir," Godfrey said, "I am absolutely ignorant of having done any harm in the matter, and have not the most remote idea why I have been arrested. I may have behaved foolishly in allowing myself to take part in what I thought was a masquerade joke, but beyond that I have nothing to blame myself for. I went to the Opera-house, never having seen a masked ball before. I was alone, and being young and evidently a stranger, I was spoken to and joked by several masked ladies. Presently one of them came up to me. I had no idea who she was; she was closely masked, and I could see nothing of her face." He then repeated the request that had been made him.

"Do you expect me to believe this ridiculous nonsense about this Captain Presnovich and his colonel?"

"I can only say, sir, what I am telling you is precisely what happened, and that I absolutely believed it. It seemed to me a natural thing that a young officer might come to a ball to see a lady who perhaps he had no other opportunity of meeting alone. I see now that I was very foolish to allow myself to be mixed up in the affair; but I thought that it was a harmless joke, and so I did as this woman asked me."

"Go on, sir," the general said in a tone of suppressed rage.

"There is little more to tell, sir. I went up with this woman to the box she had pointed out, and there found this Captain Presnovich as I believed him to be. I put on his hat, mask, and cloak, walked down the stairs, and was leaving the Opera-house when I was arrested, and am even now wholly ignorant of having committed any offence."

"A likely story," the general said sarcastically. "And this woman, did you see her face?"

"No, sir, she was closely masked. I could not even see if she were young or old; and she spoke in the same disguised, squeaking sort of voice that all the others that had spoken to me used."

"And that is your entire story, sir; you have nothing to add to it?"

"Nothing whatever, sir. I have told you the simple truth."

The general threw himself back in his chair, too exasperated to speak farther, but made a sign to the officer standing next to him to take up the interrogation. The questions were now formal. "Your name is Godfrey Bullen?" he asked.

"It is."

"Your nationality?"

"British."

"Your domicile?"

Godfrey gave the address.

"How long have you been in Russia?"

"Four months."

"What is your business?"

"A clerk to Ivan Petrovytch."

"How comes it that you speak Russian so well?"

"I was born here, and lived up to the age of ten with my father, John Bullen, who was a well-known merchant here, and left only two years ago."

"That will do," the general said impatiently. "Take him to his cell and search him thoroughly."

Naturally the most minute search revealed nothing of an incriminating character. At length Godfrey was left alone in the cell, which contained only a single chair and a rough pallet. "I have put my foot in it somehow," he said to himself, "and I can't make head nor tail of it beyond the fact that I have made an ass of myself. Was the whole story a lie? Was the fellow's name Presnovich? if not, who was he? By the rage of the general, who, I suppose, is the chief of the police, it was evident he was frightfully disappointed that I wasn't the man he was looking for. Was this Presnovich somebody that girl Katia knew and wanted to get safely away? or was she made a fool of just as I was? She looked a bright, jolly sort of girl; but that goes for nothing in Russia, all sorts of people get mixed up in plots. If she was concerned in getting him away I suppose she fixed on me because, being English and a new-comer here, it would be easy for me to prove that I had nothing to do with plots or anything of that sort, whereas if a Russian had been in my place he might have got into a frightful mess over it. Well, I suppose it will all come right in the end. It is lucky that the weather has got milder or I should have had a good chance of being frozen to death; it is cold enough as it is."

Resuming his clothes, which had been thrown down on the pallet, Godfrey drew the solitary rug over him, and in spite of the uncertainty of the position was soon fast asleep. He woke just as daylight was breaking, and was so bitterly cold that he was obliged to get up and stamp about the cell to restore circulation. Two hours later the cell door was opened and a piece of dark-coloured bread and a jug of water were handed in to him. "If this is prison fare I don't care how soon I am out of it," he said to himself as he munched the bread. "I wonder what it is made of! Rye!"

The day passed without anyone coming near him save the jailer, who brought a bowl of thin broth and a ration of bread for his dinner.

"Can't you get me another rug?" he asked the man. "If I have got to stop here for another night I shall have a good chance of being frozen to death."

Just as it was getting dark the man came in again with another blanket and a flat earthenware pan half full of sand, on which was burning a handful or two of sticks; he placed a bundle of wood beside it.

"That is more cheerful by a long way," Godfrey said to himself as the man, who had maintained absolute silence on each of his visits, left the cell. "No doubt they have been making a lot of inquiries about me, and find that I have not been in the habit of frequenting low company. I should not have had these indulgences if they hadn't. Well, it will be an amusement to keep this fire up. The wood is as dry as a bone luckily, or I should be smoked out in no time, for there is not much ventilation through that narrow loophole."

The warmth of the fire and the additional blanket made all the difference, and in a couple of hours Godfrey was sound asleep. When he woke it was broad daylight, and although he felt cold it was nothing to what he had experienced on the previous morning. At about eleven o'clock, as near as he could guess, for his watch and everything had been removed when he was searched, the door was opened and a prison official with two warders appeared. By these he was conducted to the same room where he had been first examined. Neither of the officers who had then been there was present, but an elderly man sat at the centre of the table.

"Godfrey Bullen," he said, "a careful investigation has been made into your antecedents, and with one exception, and that not, for various reasons, an important one, we have received a good report of you. Ivan Petrovytch tells us that you work in his office from breakfast-time till five in the afternoon, and that your evenings are at your own disposal, but that you generally dine with him. He gave us the names of the families with which you are acquainted, and where, as he understood, you spend your evenings when you are not at the Skating Club, where you generally go on Tuesdays and Fridays at least. We learn that you did spend your evenings with these families, and we have learned at the club that you are a regular attendant there two or three times a week, and that your general associates are: " and he read out a list which included, to Godfrey's surprise, the names of every one of his acquaintances there. "Therefore we have been forced to come to the conclusion that your story, incredible as it appeared, is a true one. That you, a youth and a foreigner, should have had the incredible levity to act in the way you describe, and to assume the disguise of a person absolutely unknown to you, upon the persuasion of a woman also absolutely unknown to you, well-nigh passes belief. Had you been older you would at once have been sent to the frontier; but as it is, the Czar, to whom the case has been specially submitted, has graciously allowed you to continue your residence here, the testimony being unanimous as to your father's position as a merchant, and to the prudence of his behaviour while resident here. But I warn you, Godfrey Bullen, that escapades of this kind, which may be harmless in England, are very serious matters here. Ignorantly, I admit, but none the less certainly, you have aided in the escape of a malefactor of the worst kind; and but for the proofs that have been afforded us that you were a mere dupe, the consequences would have been most serious to you, and even the fact of your being a foreigner would not have sufficed to save you from the hands of justice. You are now free to depart; but let this be a lesson to you, and a most serious one, never again to mix yourself up in any way with persons of whose antecedents you are ignorant, and in future to conduct yourself in all respects wisely and prudently."

"It will certainly be a lesson to me, sir. I am heartily sorry that I was so foolish as to allow myself to be mixed up in such an affair, and think I can promise you that henceforth there will be no fault to be found in my conduct."

In the ante-room Godfrey's watch, money, and the other contents of his pocket were restored to him. A carriage was in waiting for him at the outer door, and he was driven rapidly to the house of the merchant.

"This is a nice scrape into which you have got yourself, Godfrey," Ivan Petrovytch said as he entered. "It is lucky for you that you are not a Russian. But how on earth have you got mixed up in a plot? We know nothing about it beyond the fact that you had been arrested, for, although a thousand questions were asked me about you, nothing was said to me as to the charge brought against you. We have been in the greatest anxiety about you. All sorts of rumours were current in the city as to the discovery of a plot to assassinate one of the grand-dukes at the Opera-house, and there are rumours that explosive bombs had been discovered in one of the boxes. It is said that the police had received information of the attempt that was to be made, and that every precaution had been taken to arrest the principal conspirator, but that in some extraordinary manner he slipped through their fingers. But surely you can never have been mixed up in that matter?"

"That is what it was," Godfrey said, "though I had no more idea of having anything to do with a plot than I had of flying. I see now that I behaved like an awful fool." And he told the story to Petrovytch and his wife as he had told it to the head of the police. Both were shocked at the thought that a member of their household should have been engaged, even unwittingly, in such a treasonable affair.

"It is a wonder that we ever saw you again," the merchant's wife exclaimed. "It is fortunate that we are known as quiet people or we might have been arrested too. I could not have believed that anyone with sense could be silly enough to put on a stranger's mantle and hat!"

"But I thought," Godfrey urged, "that at masked balls people did play all sorts of tricks upon each other. I am sure I have read so in books. And it did seem quite likely – didn't it now? – that an officer should have come up to meet a young lady masked whom he had no chance of meeting at any other time. It certainly seemed to me quite natural, and I believe almost any fellow, if he were asked to help anyone to get out of a scrape like that, would do it."

"You may do it in England or in France, but it doesn't do to take part in anything that you don't know for certain all about here. The wonder is they made any inquiries at all. If you had been a Russian the chances are that your family would never have heard of you again from the time you left to go to the opera. Nothing that you could have said would have been believed. Your story would have been regarded by the police as a mere invention. They would have considered it as certain that in some way or other you were mixed up in the conspiracy. They would have regarded your denials as simple obstinacy, and you would have been sent to Siberia for life."

"I should advise you, Godfrey," Ivan Petrovytch said, "to keep an absolute silence about this affair. Mention it to no one. Everyone knows that something has happened to you, as the police have been everywhere inquiring; but there is no occasion to tell anyone the particulars. Of course rumours get about as to the action of the Nihilists and of the police, but as little is said as possible. It is, of course, a mere rumour that a plot was discovered at the Opera-house. Probably there were an unusual number of police at all the entrances, and a very little thing gives rise to talk and conjecture. People think that the police would not have been there had they not had suspicion that something or other was going to take place, and as everything in our days is put down to the Nihilists, it was naturally reported that the police had discovered some plot; and as two of the grand-dukes were there, people made sure it was in some way connected with them.

"As nothing came of it, and no one was, as far as was known, arrested, it would be supposed that the culprit, whoever he was, managed to evade the police. Such rumours as these are of very common occurrence, and it is quite possible that there is not much more truth in them this time than there is generally; however, of one thing you may be sure, the police are not fonder than other people of being outwitted, and whether the man for whom they were in search was a Nihilist or a criminal of some other sort you certainly aided him to escape. You are sure to be watched for some time, and it will be known to the police in a very few hours if you repeat this story to your acquaintances; if they find you keep silence about it, they will give you credit for discretion, while it would certainly do you a good deal of harm, and might even now lead to your being promptly sent across the frontier, were it known that you made a boast of having outwitted them.

"There is another reason. You will find that for a time most of your friends here will be a little shy of you. People are not fond of having as their intimates persons about whom the police are inquiring, and you will certainly find for a time that you will receive very few invitations to enter the houses of any Russians. It would be different, however, if it were known that the trouble was about something that had no connection with politics; therefore, I should advise you, when you are asked questions, to turn it off with a laugh. Say you got mixed up in an affair between a young lady and her lover, and that, like many other people, you found that those who mingle in such matters often get left in the lurch. You need not say much more than that. You might do anything here without your friends troubling much about it provided it had nothing to do with politics. Rob a bank, perpetrate a big swindle, run away with a court heiress, and as long as the police don't lay hands on you nobody else will trouble their heads about the affair; but if you are suspected of being mixed up in the most remote way with politics, your best friends will shun you like the plague."

"I will take your advice certainly," Godfrey said, "and even putting aside the danger you point out, I should not be anxious to tell people that I suffered myself to be entrapped so foolishly."

For some time, indeed, Godfrey found that his acquaintance fell away from him, and that he was not asked to the houses of any of the Russian merchants where he had been before made welcome. Cautious questions would be asked by the younger men as to the trouble into which he got with the police; but he turned these off with a laugh. "I am not going to tell the particulars," he said, "they concern other people. I can only tell you that I was fool enough to be humbugged by a pretty little masker, and to get mixed up in a love intrigue in which a young lady, her lover a captain in the army, and an irascible colonel were concerned, and that the young people made a cat's-paw of me. I am not going to say more than that, I don't want to be laughed at for the next six months;" and so it became understood that the young Englishman had simply got into some silly scrape, and had been charged by a colonel in the army with running away with his daughter, and he was therefore restored to his former footing at most of the houses that he had before visited.

Two days after his release a note was slipped into Godfrey's hand by a boy as he went out after dinner for a walk. It was unsigned, and ran as follows: —

"Dear Godfrey Bullen, my cousin is in a great state of distress. She was deceived by a third person, and in turn deceived you. She has heard since that the story was an entire fiction to enable a gentleman for whom the police were in search to escape. She only heard last night of your arrest and release, and is in the greatest grief that she should have been the innocent means of this trouble coming upon you. You know how things are here, and she is overwhelmed with gratitude that you did not in defence give any particulars that might have enabled them to trace her, for she would have found it much more difficult than a stranger would have done to have proved her innocence. She knows that you did say nothing, for had you done so she would have been arrested before morning; not improbably we might also have found ourselves within the walls of a prison, since you met her at our room, and the mere acquaintanceship with a suspected person is enough to condemn one here. By the way, we have moved our lodging, but will give you our new address when we meet you, that is, if you are good enough to continue our acquaintance in spite of the trouble that has been caused you by the credulity and folly of my cousin."

Godfrey, who had begun to learn prudence, did not open the letter until he returned home, and as soon as he had read it dropped it into the stove. He was pleased at its receipt, for he had not liked to think that he had been duped by a girl. From the first he had believed that she, like himself, had been deceived, for it had seemed to him out of the question that a young music mistress, who did not seem more than twenty years old, could have been mixed up in the doings of a desperate set of conspirators; however, he quite understood the alarm she must have felt, for though his story might have been believed owing to his being a stranger, and unconnected in any way with men who could have been concerned in a Nihilist plot, it would no doubt have been vastly more difficult for her to prove her innocence, especially as it was known that there were many women in the ranks of the Nihilists.

It was a fortnight before he met either of the students, and he then ran against them upon the quay just at the foot of the equestrian statue of Peter the Great, opposite the Isaac Cathedral. They hesitated for a moment, but he held out his hand cordially.

"Where have you been, and how is it I have not seen you before?"

"We were afraid that you might not care to know us further," Akim said, "after the trouble that that foolish cousin of mine involved you in."

"That would have been ridiculous," Godfrey said. "If we were to blame our friends for the faults of persons to whom they introduce us, there would be an end to introductions."

"Everyone wouldn't think as you do," Akim said. "We both wished to meet you, and thank you for so nobly shielding her. The silly girl might be on her way to Siberia now if you had given her name."

"I certainly should not have done that in any case. It is not the way of an Englishman to betray his friend, especially when that friend is a woman; but I thought even before I got your letter that she must in some way or other have been misled herself."

"It was very good of you," Petroff said. "Katia has been in great distress over it. She thinks that you can never forgive her."

"Pray tell her from me, Petroff, that I have blamed myself, not her. I ought not to have let myself be persuaded into taking any part in the matter. I entered into it as a joke, thinking it would be fine fun to see the old colonel's face, and also to help a pair of lovers out of a scrape. It would have been a good joke in England, but this is not a country where jokes are understood. At any rate it has been a useful lesson to me, and in future young ladies will plead in vain to get me to mix myself up in other people's affairs."

"We are going to a students' party to-night," Petroff said. "One of our number who has just passed the faculty of medicine has received an appointment at Tobolsk. It is a long way off; but it is said to be a pleasant town, and the pay is good. He is an orphan, and richer than most of us, so he is going to celebrate it with a party to-night before he starts. Will you come with us?"

"I should like it very much," Godfrey said; "but surely your friend would not wish a stranger there on such an occasion."

"Oh, yes, he would! he would be delighted, he is very fond of the English. I will answer for it that you will be welcome. Meet us here at seven o'clock this evening; he has hired a big room, and there will be two or three dozen of us there – all good fellows. Most of them have passed, and you will see the army and navy, the law and medicine, all represented."

Godfrey willingly agreed to go. He thought he should see a new phase of Russian life, and at the appointed hour he met the two students. The entertainment was held in a large room in a traktar or eating-house in a small street. The room was already full of smoke, a number of young men were seated along two tables extending the length of the room, and crossed by one at the upper end. Several were in military uniform, and two or three in that of the navy. Akim and Petroff were greeted boisterously by name as they entered.

"I will talk to you presently," Akim shouted in reply to various invitations to take his seat. "I have a friend whom I must first introduce to Alexis." He and Petroff took Godfrey up to the table at the end of the room. "Alexis," Akim said, "I have brought you a gentleman whom I am sure you will welcome. He has proved himself a true friend, one worthy of friendship and honour. His name is Godfrey Bullen."