Princess Zara. Ross Beeckman
in his presence. My manner of greeting him had demonstrated that without any question of doubt. Presently he asked me:
"What is your particular avocation just now, Derrington? Are you still at the old game?"
"Still at the old game," I replied, nodding my head solemnly. "I suppose I will always be at it in one way or another."
"Your government won't let you go very far away from its reach," he said, with a quizzical smile.
"Oh, the government! I have cut it, Alexis."
"What? Left the service?"
"Temporarily," I replied, and he laughed again as loudly as before. There was reason for his levity, because placing my resignation in the hands of the secretary had become a habit with me. I was periodically depressed by the duties of a secret service agent and as often determined to leave the service for good. But as often, I had returned to it upon the request of one department or another of my government, when my services were required in the line of some particular duty which officialdom was pleased to assure me could not be so well accomplished by any other person of its acquaintance. That was why Alexis Saberevski laughed.
"Is your resignation still on file? Or is it only lying on the table awaiting action, Daniel?" he asked me, and there was just a touch of ironic suggestion in his manner, which nettled me.
"The resignation is a fact this time," I replied. "I have earned a period of rest, and I propose to take it."
"Going abroad, Derrington?"
"No."
"Prefer to undergo the process of dry rot, here in New York?"
"Yes; for a time at least."
"Is there nothing on the other side of the water, that attracts you?"
"Nothing at all."
He switched his right leg to his left knee and blew a cloud of smoke into the air.
"You're not a lazy chap, Dan," he remarked, as if he were deeply considering the verity of that statement. "One wouldn't pick you out as a blasé individual who is tired of everything the world has to offer. You are as filled with energy and nervous force as any chap I ever knew; and you are not yet thirty-five."
"Quite true," I admitted.
"Yet, like a craft that has fought its way through stormy seas around the world, you sit there and try to assure me that you are content to tie up against a rotting wharf, in an odorous slip, and pass the rest of your days in inaction. It isn't like you, Dan."
"It looks very enticing to me just now, however."
"The trouble is," he said, "that your American diplomacy and your amazing politics over here, offer no opportunities to a man of your talents. You should go against the pricks of European intrigue. You ought to butt in, as you fellows express it, upon French statecraft which leaves nothing to be desired in the way of double dealings. You should try Austrian lies, or German brutalities, or Italian and Spanish sophistry, or English stupidity. Believe me, one of these would offer many points of interest which should interest and engage your attention."
"Why not Russian cruelty?" I asked. "That seems to be the only important nationality you have omitted."
"Why not?" he repeated after me.
"You seem to have tired of it yourself, Saberevski."
He shrugged his shoulders, leaning back in his chair, and the suggestion of a shadow passed across his handsome face.
"Dan," he said with an entire change of tone that startled me into renewed interest, "I haven't any doubt that you have always regarded me as a queer sort of chap, more or less shrouded by a mystery you could not fathom. And you were right."
"I have never——" I began. But he raised a hand to arrest me.
"I know it," he said. "You do not need to assure me of that. You are too much of a man, and your character is too broad and deep, for you ever to attempt an intimacy which was not invited. But it is my pleasure just now, old man, to give you a little bit of my history. It may interest you. And it may lead to a change in your views; not regarding you, but in connection with myself. I am a much older man than you are; fifteen years and more, I should say. All my life, up to the time we last parted, has been passed in the personal service of his majesty, the czar. I have been as close to him as any man can ever obtain, and I am probably the only one who has enjoyed his confidence to the extent of retaining it in the face of studied opposition on the part of the greatest nobles of the empire. But I have retained it, Dan, and to such an extent that I suppose myself to be the only man living to-day, against whom Alexander would not permit himself to be influenced. There is a reason for it and a good one, but I need not go into that."
"No," I said. "You need not tell me this at all, Alexis. I am quite glad enough to see you and to have you here, without explanation."
He made a gesture of impatience.
"As if I did not know that," he added; "but as I said a moment ago, it is my pleasure to recite some of these things to you, because since I came into this room and grasped your hand I have been impressed by the idea that there is a great work for you to do; a great duty for you to perform. A stupendous obstacle to human development exists in one part of Europe to-day, which I believe you could overcome and demolish, if only you could be convinced of it. I wonder, Dan, if you would give the subject any thought if I were to suggest it to you?"
"Try," I said.
"I wonder if you would seriously consider one of the greatest achievements that remains undone in Europe to-day," he added, meditatively.
"The obstacle to which you just now referred?" I asked.
"Yes."
"What is it?"
"Nihilism."
"Hell!" I replied with emphasis.
But he took me literally, and not even the suggestion of a smile showed in his face as he replied:
"That is the fitting word, Dan. It is hell. It is worse than that to hundreds of thousands of human beings, from the lowest mujik of the steppes, to the czar himself. It is a word which carries with it a certain magic which always spells the word death. It is death to those who antagonize it, and it is death to them that uphold it. It is death to the minister, the governor, the official, and it is death to the poor devil who plots in the dark, secretly with his fellows, against the powers that rule him. Nihilism is well named, for it means nothing and it ends in nothing. Nihilo nihil fit! Whoever named the revolutionists of Russia so, builded better than they knew."
I was watching Saberevski with some amazement. I had never heard him express himself in such terms before, and I had not supposed him capable, sympathetically, of doing so. I was not without a certain fund of knowledge regarding the subject he had introduced, for my professional duties had taken me more than once into Russia, and I had encountered much of the conditions he described. But I regarded them, as well as Saberevski himself, with the American idea and from an American standpoint. It had always seemed to me so unnecessary that conditions should exist as I had heard them described over there. I had always believed that if the government of Russia would only go about the work differently, it would be so easy to eradicate every phase of the so-called nihilism, and especially that branch of it practiced by those who are called extremists. Evidently Saberevski entertained something of this view himself, although from the standpoint of a Russian, for he ended a short silence between us by saying:
"I have not finished what I was going to tell you, Dan. I have served Alexander, the czar, many years, and served him faithfully. There are reasons now why I can serve him no longer, in the capacity and at the places where he needs me most. My life which is of small moment, and his who is my royal master, would not be worth the weight of a feather if I were to show my face at St. Petersburg again. There is nothing remaining for me to do save to sit down quietly in some far country of the world, and watch from a distance the passing of events which some day, near or far as the case