CHAPTER XXIX
IN THE STREET OF ST. GREGORY
THE luck seemed to be dead against us. Volna could scarcely put her foot to the ground and, although she struggled gamely to continue the flight, Ladislas and I were all but carrying her.
The crowd went streaming past us as we could make only the slowest progress; and as no vehicle of any sort was in sight, capture appeared inevitable.
Volna perceived this and begged us to leave her. “It will be far better for me to be arrested alone than for all three to be taken; and you see it is hopeless now that the three can escape.”
“I am not going,” said Ladislas.
“Mr. Anstruther, you have the proofs that will free my mother. If you will escape and destroy them, she will be safe. Please go.”
It was a shrewd plea.
I took out the papers and held them toward Ladislas. “You go. I can trust my friends to get me out of any mess.”
“No; to-day’s business with Bremenhof is too serious for that,” he answered. “Besides, this is my affair. Go, Robert. It is sheer madness for you to remain. You can do no good.”
“If my mother is safe, Mr. Anstruther, I do not care. For her sake as well as your own, get those papers away.”
I glanced round and saw Bremenhof was fast forcing his way to us through the scattering crowd.
“We may get a sleigh or a carriage at the end of the street there,” I said; and without more ado, I picked Volna up in my arms and ran up the street with her.
The crowd cheered us lustily. Some one recognized Ladislas, rallied the flying crowd and succeeded in reforming them again when we had passed.
Perceiving this, and recognizing that we might in this way escape even at the last moment, Bremenhof, hoping to awe the crowd, ordered the police to draw their revolvers. At first the people fell back, but encouraged by the cries of the man who had constituted himself the leader they formed again, and answered the order to clear the way with yells and shouts of defiance.
Losing his head Bremenhof told his men to fire. A ragged volley of pistol shots followed and two men fell wounded.
For an instant a solemn hush fell; and then rose such a wild fierce yell of rage and fury from the mob that the police drew back in suspense.
The two parties stood facing one another for a breathing space. Then some one threw a heavy stone and struck one of the police in the face. Two of his comrades near him fired in return. A volley of stones was hurled by the crowd, and a wild and desperate conflict was waged over the bodies of the fallen men.
People came running to the scene from all directions. Many of them were armed with clubs, hatchets, crowbars, and such weapons as could be snatched up in a hurry. Some carried revolvers; and, as we stood awhile, unable for the press of the people to get forward, a fierce hand-to-hand fight was waged. Hard blows were given on either side, shots were exchanged, and blood flowed freely, until the police were beaten back in their turn and had to fly.
The mob whooped and yelled and halloed savagely over their victory, and pressed forward hot and eager to wreak their anger upon the flying men.
The triumph was short-lived, however. Into the street from the end for which we were making swung a large force of troops to the rescue of the police.
I drew Volna back into the doorway of a house as they passed at the double; and the fight broke out again this time with the advantage all against the strikers.
Men fell fast, and the crowd scattered and made for cover in the houses on either side of the street.
Escape for us was now impossible for the time, for the fight raged close to the door of the house where we had sheltered.
In the thick of the fight at some distance from us, I could see Bremenhof. If he had been a coward while we two had been alone and he believed death to be close to him, he was no coward now. He was not like the same man. Passion, or the company of his men, gave him courage. He was everywhere, directing his men and exposing himself fearlessly where the fighting was hottest; and always seeking to press forward as though in pursuit of us.
Fresh tactics were next adopted by the crowd. Men who had fled from the street appeared at the open windows of the houses and fired on the police and troops from this vantage. Many shots told; and to save themselves from this form of attack, the troops began to enter the houses in their turn and search for the armed men.
And all this time the press and throng of police and strikers made escape for us impossible.
After a time the training of the troops and police told; the crowds in the streets lessened; many prisoners were taken, most of them bloodstained with marks of the conflict; and the noise of the conflict began to die down. But not for long.
The news that fighting was in progress had spread far and wide, and a body of strikers who had been parading the main street near were attracted to the scene.
The police in their turn found themselves caught between two hostile mobs; and the flame of fight which had almost flickered down flared up again more luridly and vigorously than ever.
The prisoners were torn from the grasp of their captors in the moment of surprise, and hurried past us to the rear of the fighters.
The troops were still strong enough, however, to make the fight even; and after the first moment of surprise, their discipline told. They formed in lines facing up and down the street, and settled down with grim resolve for the deadly work before them.
Then came a loud cry of “A barricade! A barricade!”
In little more than a minute a couple of heavy waggons were trundled out from a side street, and turned over close to where we three were waiting. Out from the houses were fetched a heterogeneous collection of furniture—bedsteads, mattresses, couches, chests of drawers, shop counters, chairs, tables, anything and everything that lay to hand was seized and brought out. Some were even hurled from windows above. And behind the impromptu rampart armed men crouched mad with long pent passion, and eager to wreak vengeance upon their enemies.
Meanwhile Ladislas had viewed the scene with fast mounting distress and agitation. The deliberateness of these last preparations for the fight seemed to appal him. The sight of this harvest of violence sprung from the seeds of his own revolutionary theorizing wrung his heart. Dreaming of victory by peaceful means, the horror of this bloodshed and carnage goaded him to despair. His suffering was acute.
Heedless of his own safety he rushed hither and thither among those who were leading the mob, dissuading them from violence and urging them to abandon their resistance.
Half a dozen times when he had dashed out to press his plea of non-resistance, I had had almost to drag him back into safety.
The lull that came when the barricade was forming gave him a fresh opportunity. In vain I told him that nothing could stay the fight now that the smouldering wrath of years of wrong had flamed into the mad fury of the moment, and when the wild passions of both sides had been roused.
Volna joined her voice to mine and urged him.
But in his frenzy of emotional remorse, he paid no heed to us. “Don’t you see that all this horror is the result of what I in my blindness have been doing?” he cried. “The thought of it is torment and the sight of it hell. Would you have me skulk here to save my skin when an effort now may stop further bloodshed?”
With that he rushed out.
He went first among the strikers, and we saw him advising, arguing, urging, pleading, commanding in turn with no effect. Those whom he addressed listened to him at first with a measure of patience but afterwards with shrugs, sullen looks, intolerant gestures, and at last with stubborn, angry resentment at his interference, or jeers and flouts according to their humour.
And all this time the preparations were not stayed a second but hurried forward with feverish haste and vengeful lust of fight.
At length, I saw him thrust aside roughly, almost savagely, by one burly fellow who had been building the barricade and now stood gripping a heavy iron crowbar and wiping the sweat from his brow.
This act served as a cue for the rest. Ladislas was passed from hand to hand, and pushed with jibes and oaths, from the centre of the barricade to the pavement.
For an instant he tried a last appeal to the men about him; but their only reply was a jeering laugh, half contemptuous, half angry, but wholly indifferent to every word he uttered.
Just then a loud command from the officer in charge of the troops was given and the soldiers advanced a few paces and levelled their guns.
In a moment Ladislas had climbed over the barricade and rushed forward into the space between the troops and the mob. He ran forward with uplifted hand.
“For the love of God, peace,” he cried to the officer, his voice clear and strong above the din. “No more blood must be shed.”
For an instant a silence fell upon both sides, and all eyes were fixed upon him.
The next, a single shot was fired from among the ranks of the troops.
Ladislas’ uplifted hand dropped. He staggered, and turned toward the mob, so that all saw by the red mark on his white, broad forehead where the bullet had struck him, and fell huddled up on the road.
It was the signal for the fight to break loose. A wild, deep groan of execration leapt from every throat behind the barricade, followed by shouts and cries of defiance. His fall at the hands of the troops had raised him to the place of martyr; and those who had been quick to jeer him now shrieked and yelled for vengeance upon his murderers.
Surely an irony of fate that he who had given his life in the cause of peace should by his death have loosed the wildest passion for blood.
A ghastly scene followed. As the soldiers charged the barricade, the mob offered a stubborn and desperate resistance. Many of them were shot down, but there were others ready to take their places. Time after time the troops reached and mounted the barricade only to be driven back. Once they carried it, and commenced to charge the crowd behind; but they were outnumbered many times, and the mob beat them, and hurled them back and pursued them even across the barricade, inflicting serious loss.
I seized that moment to run out and recover the body of my poor friend. I found him; and as I was carrying him out of the press of the tumult, the troops rallied, and the tide of the fight came surging back past me.
The chances of the struggle brought Bremenhof close up. He saw me, and with a cry of anger rushed to seize me.
Some of the mob had seen my effort to get Ladislas away. One of them had stayed to help and he was thus close at hand when the attempt was made to capture me. Thinking that the intention was to prevent my carrying Ladislas away, he pressed forward and with a savage oath thrust his revolver right in Bremenhof’s face and fired.
This act proved the turning point in the fight.
Fierce shouts of exultation went up as Bremenhof was recognized. The strikers halted, rallied and reformed, and they renewed the attack upon the troops with irresistible vigour and drove them back helter-skelter in all directions.
The mob had won; but at a cost which had yet to be counted. Nor did they stay to count it. The street resounded with whoops and yells of victory. Flushed and sweated with their exertions, the men were like children in their delight. They shook hands one with another, and laughed and sang and shouted and even danced in sheer glee.
They had beaten the troops; had sent them scurrying like frightened hares to cover; they had carried the cause of the people to triumph; they had spilt the blood of the oppressor; and the taste of it made them drunk with the joy of the new found power and strength.
Some one started the Polish national air. The strain was caught up and echoed by a thousand deep-toned, tuneful voices with an impression to be remembered to one’s dying hour.
A crowd came round me as I stood by the two dead bodies.
Bremenhof’s corpse was kicked and cursed and spat upon, till I sickened at the sight.
Ladislas was lifted and borne away, with the care and honour due to a martyr, to the strains of the national air. The revolution had begun in terrible earnestness; and that day’s fight was its baptism of blood.
As the men bore Ladislas away, I went back to Volna to tell her the grim news and get her away to a place of safety.