CLARA alighted from the train at a station immediately preceding Miroslav. She was met by Olga, the girl with the short hair and sparse teeth who was engaged to the judge, the two reaching the city partly on a peasant’s waggon, partly on foot. At sight of the familiar landscape Clara seemed weird to herself. It was her own Miroslav, yet she was worse than a stranger in it. She felt like a ghost visiting what was once his home. On the other hand, the unmistakable evidences of the recent riot contracted her heart with pain and brought back that Reproach.
Olga took her to a “conspiracy house.” This was a basement in the outskirts of the town, whose squatty windows faced the guardhouse of military stores and commanded a distant view of the river. The only other tenants of that courtyard were three sisters, all of them deaf and in a state of semi-idiocy. The basement had been rented soon after Clara’s flight. It consisted of three rooms, all very meagrely furnished. Lying under the sofa of the middle room was a wooden roller, which had once been intended for a secret printing office. One of the walls was hung with a disorderly pile of clothes of both sexes—the shed disguises of passing conspirators.
But very few members were allowed to visit her. Thosewho were saluted her with admiring looks and generally treated her as a heroine, which caressed her vanity most pleasantly. With a temerity born of an acquired habit of danger, not unmixed with some bravado, Clara was burning to visit her parents, her sister and her mother-in-law, and to take a look at her native neighbourhood. Her friends made an effort to keep her indoors. She would not be restrained, assuring them that she was going to take good care of herself, but she finally offered to compromise on a meeting with her sister, provided she brought her little girl with her.
“I am crazy to see her,” she said, meaning the child.
“See little Ruchele! Why youarecrazy, Clara!” Olga declared. “If you do all Miroslav will know the very next day that ‘Aunt Clara’ is in town.”
“Nonsense. She won’t know me. She has not seen me for more than a year. Besides, I’ll wear my veil. Oh, I must see her; don’t oppose me, Olga, dear.”
The meeting took place on a secluded bit of lawn under a sky suffused with the lingering gold of a dying sunset. And sure enough, Ruchele was extremely shy of the lady in black. When Clara caught her in her arms passionately she set up a scream so loud that her mother wrenched her from her aunt’s embrace for fear of attracting a crowd from a neighboring lane.
A debate between Clara and Elkin was to take place in Orlovsky’s house the next evening. A few hours before the time set for the gathering Clara received an unexpected call from Elkin. This was their first meeting since her arrival, and she welcomed him with sincere cordiality. She respected him as her first teacher of socialism. As tohis love for her, which could still be read in his eyes, it flattered her now.
“Well,” he said, trying to take a light tone, but betraying agitation. “There is some news in town. Clara Yavner has been seen about.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that Clara Yavner has been seen about,” he repeated with sarcastic articulation. And by way of putting a period to the sentence, he opened his lips into a lozenge-shaped sneer and leaned his head against the mass of hung-up clothes under which he sat on an oblong stool.
She was seated on another tabouret, with her back to the low window. His manner exasperated her. “But I have been out only once,” she retorted calmly, controlling her anger, “and then I was heavily veiled.”
“Well, could not some people have recognised you by your figure and carriage? I am sure I could. At any rate your cousin, Vigdoroff, was to see me a little while ago, for the express purpose of conveying this message to you, Clara. The gossips of Cucumber Market are whispering about your having been seen in town, ‘and in addition to truths no end of fibs are being told.’ Your mother is quite uneasy about it, and—well, Clara, at the risk of having it set down to a desire on my part to slip out of the debate, I should suggest that you take no further chances and leave Miroslav at once.”
“Oh, nonsense. Am I not safe in this basement at least?”
“Yes, I think you are, but if the police should get wind of your presence in town, why, they would not leave a stone unturned. They have been itching for a chance to tone down their reputation for stupidity ever since your disappearance.”
She smiled and frowned at once.
“Besides,” he went on, leaning back against the clothes and gazing at the ceiling, “if that debate is your chief mission here I am willing to capitulate in advance. You know I cannot debate with you, Clara. I am still in your power. My brain is in a whirl in your presence. It is at this moment. If that debate took place I should simply not know what I was talking about. You would not wish me to make an exhibition of the abject helplessness that comes over me when I see you, would you?”
His words, uttered in monotonous accents, contrasted so sharply with the air of mockery that had attended his former attempts at an avowal; they sounded so forlornly simple, his spirit was so piteously broken that he seemed a changed man. She was touched.
“Don’t speak like that,” she said kindly. “I’ll do as you say. I’ll leave Miroslav at once.”
“Is there absolutely no hope for me, Clara?”
“I am no longer free, Elkin. I am a married woman,” she said, flushing violently. “Let us change the subject. Tell me something about your Americans.”
He dropped his eyes, and after a rather long pause he said, blankly:
“Well, pardon me, then. You have my best wishes, Clara. I say it from my heart. I shall be your warmest friend as long as I live. I confess I dreamed of your joining our party, so that I might be near you, and hoped that some day you would become mine.”
“The right place for a revolutionist is here, in Russia, Elkin.”
“Nobody is going to try to persuade you to leave the movement,” he said, levelling a meek, longing look at her. “The Russian people act like wild beasts toward our poorJews, Clara; yet they and the Russian revolution will ever be dear to our hearts. We appreciate that it is their blindness which makes such brutes of them. We shall always think of those who are in the fight here; we shall adore you; we shall worship you, Clara; and perhaps, too, we shall be able to do something for Russian liberty from there. But if you condemn us for joining the emigrants, I wish to say this, that if you had been in Miroslav during the riot you would perhaps take a more indulgent view of our step. So many Jewish revolutionists have sacrificed their lives by ‘going to the people’—to the Russian people. It’s about time some of us at least went to our own people. They need us, Clara.”
“Look here, Elkin,” she said with ardent emphasis, striving to deaden the consciousness of his love-lorn look that was breaking her heart, “you must not think I am so soulless as to take no interest in the victims of those horrors, for I do. I do. I can assure you I do. I have been continually discussing this question in my mind. I have studied it. My heart is bleeding for our poor Jews, but even if it were solely a question of saving the Jews, even then one’s duty would be to work for the revolution. How many Russian Jews could you transport to America and Palestine? Surely not all the five million there are. The great majority of them will stay here and be baited, and the only hope of these is a liberated Russia. All history tells us that the salvation of the Jews lies in liberty and in liberty only. England was the first country to grant them the right to breathe because she was the first country where the common people wrested rights for themselves. The French revolution emancipated the Jews, and so it goes. If there were no parliamentary governments in Western Europe, the Jews of Germany, Austria, or Belgium wouldstill be treated as they are in Russia. When Russia has some freedom at least, her Jews, too, will be treated like human beings.”
“But we are not like the Palestinians, Clara. We don’t propose to estrange ourselves from the revolutionary movement. We shall support it with American money, and we hope to fit out expeditions to rescue important prisoners from Siberia, and to take them across the Pacific Ocean to our commune.”
“Dreams!” she said, laughing good-naturedly.
The discussion lasted about an hour longer. He had not the strength to get up, and she had not the heart to cut him short. They listened to each other’s arguments with rapt attention, yet they were both aware of the unspoken other discussion—on the pathos of his love—that went on between them all the while they talked of the great exodus.
And while she commiserated Elkin and felt flattered by her power over him, her heart was full of yearning tenderness for her husband, of joy in him and in her honeymoon with him.
When Elkin rose from his seat at last he said:
“By the way, I came near forgetting it—your cousin wants to see you.”
“Volodia? Volodia Vigdoroff? I thought he would dread to come near me.”
Time being short, the meeting was set for an early hour the very next morning. Elkin had made his adieux, but he still lingered. There was an extremely awkward stillness which was broken by the appearance of Olga. Then he left.
Disclosing the location, or, indeed, the existence, of a “conspiracy house” to one uninitiated into undergroundlife was impossible. Accordingly, Vladimir was to meet Clara in a scanty pine grove near the Nihilists’ basement. On his way thither Vladimir was continually looking over his shoulder, lest he was being followed by spies. He was flurried and the sight of every policeman he met gave him a moment or two of abject terror. But the part he had taken in the fight of the Defence Guard had left him with a sense of his own potential courage; so he was trying to live up to it by keeping this appointment with his “illegal” cousin, whom he was so thirsting to see. That she was married he did not know. He was going to persuade her to join his American party. At this minute, in the high-strung state of his mind, the result of recent experiences, he felt as though she were not merely his “second sister,” which is Russian for cousin, but a real one. His chief object for seeking this interview, however, had been to celebrate his own vindication. By her enthusiasm for the revolutionary movement from which he stayed away she had formerly made him feel like a coward and a nonentity; now, however, that in his judgment the riots plainly meant the moral bankruptcy of that movement, so far at least as it concerned revolutionists of Jewish blood, he mentally triumphed over her.
The meeting had been fixed for an early hour. The air in the woods was cold and piquant with the exhalations of young evergreens. The grass, considerably yellowed and strewn with cones, was still beaded with dew, save for a small outlet of the clearing which was being rapidly invaded by the sun.
They met with warm embraces and kisses.
“Clara, my sister! If you only knew what we have gone through!” he said, with the passion of heartfelt tragedy in his subdued voice.
“How is uncle? How is auntie?” she asked with similar emotion.
His kiss and embrace had left an odd sensation in him. He had never had an occasion to kiss her before; and now that he had not seen her for about a year the contact of his lips with the firm, though somewhat faded, cheek of this interesting young woman had revealed to him what seemed to be an unnatural and illicit fact that she was not a sister to him, but—a woman.
They seated themselves in a sunnyspot.
“Are you really going to America, Volodia?” she inquired with a familiar smile, carefully hiding her grief.
“I certainly am, and what is more, I want you to come along with us,” he answered, admiring her figure and the expression of her face as he had never done before. “Oh, I am quite in earnest about it, Clara. You see, the fist of the rioter has driven it home to me that I am a Jew. I must go where my people go. Come, Clara, you have staked your life for the Russians long enough, and how have they repaid you? Come and let us do something for our own poor unfortunate Jews.”
She listened with the attention of one good-naturedly waiving a discussion.
“And what has become of that bridge you were building?” she asked.
“And what has become of that gallows, of the martyr’s scaffold, which you said united Jew and Gentile? Hasthatdone anybody any good? As to the bridge I was building across the chasm that divides us from the Christians, I admit that it has been wrecked to splinters; wrecked unmercifully by that same fist of the rioter. I dreamed of the brotherhood of Jew and Gentile and that fist woke me. The only point of contact between Jew and Gentile possibleto-day is this”—pointing at a scar slightly back of his ear, his badge of active service as a member of the Defence Committee.
“Why, did you get it in the riot?” she asked with a gesture of horror.
“It’s a trifle, of course. Others have been crippled for life, but such as this bit of a scar is it will stand me in good stead as a reminder that I am a Jew. The fact is now everlastingly engraven on my flesh. There is no effacing it now. But joking aside, Clara, I love the Russian people as much as I ever did. My heart breaks at the thought of leaving Russia. I don’t think the Russians themselves are capable of loving their people as I do. But it can’t be helped. There is an impassable chasm between us.”
He was conscious of being on his mettle, as though the fiascoes he had sustained in his last year’s talks with her were being retrieved. As to her, there was a look of curiosity and subtle condescension in her eye as she listened. But she was thoroughly friendly and warm-hearted, so for the moment he saw nothing but encouragement to his flow of conversation. From time to time he would be seized with mortal fear lest they should be pounced upon by gendarmes, but he never betrayed it.
At one point, when he had put a question to her and paused, she said, instead of answering it:
“Really, Volodia, I somehow can’t get it into my head that you are actually going to America.”
“Oh, I am, I am. I am going to that land ‘where one’s wounded feelings are sure of shelter.’ Come along, Clara. Haven’t you taken risks enough in Russia? Come and serve your own people, your poor, trodden people. Have not the riots been enough to open your eyes, Clara?”
“As if those were the only riots there were,” she returned,pensively. “All humanity is in the hands of rioters.”
“But our homes are being destroyed, Clara,” he urged in an impassioned undertone. “Our people are being plundered, maimed, their every feeling is outraged, their daughters are assaulted.”
“Is there anything new in that?” she asked, in the same pensive tone. “Are not the masses robbed of the fruit of their toil? Are they not maimed in the workshops or in the army? Are not their daughters reduced to dishonour by their own misery and by the lust of the mighty? Are not the cities full of human beings without a home? All Russia is riot-ridden. The whole world, for that matter. The riots that you are dwelling upon are only a detail. Do away withtheriot and all the others will disappear of themselves.”
A note of animation came into her melancholy voice.
“What you ‘Americans’ propose to do,” she continued, “is to clasp a handful of victims in your arms and to flee to America with them. Well, I have no fault to find with you, Volodia. I wish you and your party success. But the great, great bulk of victims, Gentiles as well as Jews, remain here, and the rioters—the throne, the bureaucracy, the drones—remain with them.”
She struck him as amazingly beautiful this morning and she seemed to speak as one inspired. He listened to her with a feeling of reverence.
“But you have done enough, Clara,” he said when she finished. “You have faced dangers enough. Sooner or later you will be taken, and then—” (he threw up his hands sadly). “You have a perfect right to save your life and liberty now.”
She shook her head.
“You are a wonderful woman, Clara. By George, you are! Therefore, if you are arrested, it will be a great loss not only to your relatives, but to all the Jews. Haven’t the Gentiles robbed us enough?”
“Would you have them rob us of our sacred principles, too?” she retorted, with a faint smile. “Indeed, the right to die for liberty is the only right the government cannot take away from the Jew.”
“Come to America, Clara.”
“Oh, that’s utterly impossible, Volodia,” she answered, gazing at the cones.
The discovery that Prince Boulatoff was prominently connected with the underground movement, which originated in the confession of one of his revolutionary pupils, had created considerable excitement in St. Petersburg. The secret service had no difficulty in securing his photograph, and when it was shown to the little man who had acted as an errand boy at the celebrated cheese-shop he at once identified him as one of those who dug the mine. That Pavel had recently been in Miroslav was known to the whole town. Accordingly, the central political detective office at St. Petersburg despatched several picked men there to scent for his underground trail. These practically took the matter out of the hands of the local gendarmes, whom they treated with professional contempt. They gradually learned that Pavel had been a frequent visitor at Orlovsky’s house, and then they took to shadowing Orlovsky and those in whose company he was seen. They made discovery after discovery.
One of these imported spies was the fellow who once shadowed Clara in St. Petersburg—the tall man with the swinging arm and the stiff-looking neck whom she meton the day when the revolutionist with the Greek name was arrested.
It was about 8 o’clock in the evening, some ten minutes before train time, when this spy saw an uneducated Jewish woman in blue spectacles crossing the square in front of the station. She seemed familiar to him, yet not enough so to attract serious attention.
It was Clara. Her disguise, in addition to the blue spectacles, consisted of a heavy Jewish wig, partly covered by a black kerchief, and an old-fashioned cloak. To spare her the risk of facing the gendarmes of the station, her ticket had been bought for her by somebody else, her intention being to slip into her car at the last moment. Having reached the place too early, however, she was now trying to kill the interval by sauntering about. This time the spy escaped her notice, but a little later, less than a minute before the third bell was sounded and while she was scurrying through the third class restaurant, she caught sight of him, as he stood half leaning against the counter drowsily.
Here he had a much better look at her. She certainly was familiar to him, but he was still unable to locate her, and before he knew his own mind he let her pass. It was not until the train had pulled out, and its rear lights were rapidly sinking into the vast gloom of the night, that it dawned upon him that she looked like the girl he used to spy upon in St. Petersburg. Blue spectacles as a means of concealing one’s identity are quite a commonplace article, so he called himself names for not having thought of it in time and hastened to telegraph to the gendarmes at the next station to arrest the young woman, giving a description of Clara’s disguise and general appearance.
Some three quarters of an hour later an answer camefrom the next station that the train had been detained for a careful search, but that no such woman could be found on it.
While that search was in progress Clara, her disguise removed, entered the “conspiracy house,” where Olga had been waiting for her, in case she should have found it inconvenient to board the train.
“There you are!” Olga said, in despair, as she beheld her friend’s smiling face in the doorway. “What has happened?”
“It’s a fizzle, that’s all. But it might have been worse than that. There is aSt.Petersburg fellow at the station. He knows me.”
“Did he see you?” Olga demanded breathlessly.
“I should say he did,” Clara replied with another smile. “Well, I thought it was all up. Gracious! didn’t my feet grow weak under me. But my star has not gone back on me yet, it seems. I got into one of the cars just as the third bell was heard. I was sure he was close behind me, but, when I turned around, looking for a seat, I saw he was not there. He must have gone to another car for the moment, or something. Anyhow, I tried to get out again. I thought I had nothing to lose, and—here I am. But look here, Olya[E], are you sure there is nobody outside?”
“I think I am,” Olga answered firmly. “Why?”
“I thought I saw a queer looking individual as I turned into this street. I must have been mistaken. Still, I confess, the presence of that fellow in this town is anything but a pleasant surprise to me. I don’t like it at all. I wonder why we have not heard from Masha about him.”
The reason they had not heard from her was simply this,that the invasion of the St. Petersburg detectives had had such an overbearing effect on everybody in the local gendarmerie that her brother had become unusually reticent on the affairs of his office even at home.
Two or three hours had passed, when Clara and Olga heard an ominous confusion of footsteps in the vestibule. The next moment the room was crowded with men, some in uniforms, others in citizens’ clothes. One of the St. Petersburg officers rushed to a window where a blue medicine bottle—Clara’s “window signal”—stood on the sill, to prevent either of the two Nihilist girls from removing it by way of warning to their friends.
“You here!” the tall, baronial-looking procureur, Princess Chertogoff’s son-in-law, said to Olga, in amazement. He bowed to her most chivalrously, but she turned away from him with a contemptuous gesture.
“And may I ask foryourname, Miss,” a gendarme officer accosted Clara.
“I decline to answer,” she returned, simply. Her eyes were on a pistol which she saw in the hand of one of the gendarmes.
“You live in Miroslav, don’t you?”
Instead of answering this question she sprang at the man who held the pistol, seized it from him and began firing at the wall. This was her substitute for a removal of the safety signal from the window.
The weapon was instantly knocked out of her hand by a blow with the flat of a gleaming sword, and she was forced into a seat, two men holding her tightly by the arms, while a third was tying a handkerchief around her bleeding hand.
“I merely wanted to alarm the neighbourhood,” she saidcalmly. “But, of course, you people will turn it into a case of armed resistance.”
When Orlovsky learned of Clara’s and Olga’s arrest, one of his first thoughts was about notifying Pavel, of whose relations toward Clara he had by this time been informed. It appeared that the only man he knew who had “underground” connections in the two capitals and was in a position to communicate with Boulatoff was the former leader of the Miroslav Circle, Elkin. This, however, did not stop Orlovsky. To Elkin he went and explained the situation to him.
“Elkin, darling, you know you are a soul of a fellow,” he implored him. “Pavel is either in St. Petersburg or in Moscow, and you are the only man who could get at him.”
Elkin stood, thinking glumly, at the window for a few minutes, and then said:
“Very well, I am going.”
He started on the same day, accompanied by a spy. That evening Orlovsky, the judge and several other members of the Miroslav Circle, were arrested at Orlovsky’s house, and a few days later news came from Moscow that Pavel and Elkin had been taken in a café, while Makar had fallen into a “trap” at the house of an old friend of Elkin’s, who had been seized several hours before.
MONTHS had passed. Spring was three or four weeks old, but cell No. — on the first floor of the Trubetzkoy Bastion, Fortress of Peter and Paul, had not yet tasted its caressing breath. It was a rather spacious, high-ceiled vault, but being quite close to the stone fence outside, it was practically without the range of sunshine and breeze. Its window, which was high overhead, at the top of a sloping stretch of sill, sent down twilight at noonday and left it in the grip of night two or three hours after. The chill, damp air was laden with a stifling odour of must. The lower part of the walls was covered with a thick layer of mould which looked like a broad band of heavy tapestry of a dark-greenish hue.
The solitary inmate of this pit was walking back and forth diagonally, from corner to corner. He wore a loose, shapeless cloak of coarse but flimsy material, which he was continually wrapping about his slim, emaciated figure. He was shivering. As he walked to and fro, his head was for the most part thrown back, his eyes raised to the window, whose sloping sill he could have scarcely touched with the tips of his fingers. Now and then he paused and turned toward one of the walls, as though listening for some sounds, and then, with an air of nerveless disappointment, he would resume his walk.
It was Pavel.
The spy who accompanied Elkin from Miroslav to Moscow had shadowed him in the ancient city until he saw him with Prince Boulatoff and then with Makar and a university student, in whose room the four revolutionists were arrested, shortly after, in the course of a heated debate between Makar and Elkin on the riots and the question of emigration to America.
During the first few weeks of Pavel’s stay in the fortress the guards, who had been converted to revolutionary sympathies by a celebrated political prisoner named Nechayeff, had carried communications not only from prisoner to prisoner, but also from them to the revolutionists at large; so that theWill of the Peoplewas at one time partly edited from this fortress, and a bold plot was even planned by Nechayeff to have the Czar locked up in a cell while he visited its cathedral. But these relations between the guards and the revolutionists, which lasted about a year, had finally been disclosed, and since then Pavel and the inmates of the other cells had been treated with brutal stringency.
Pavel’s trial was not likely to take place for another year or two, but his fate was clear to him: death, probably commuted to life-imprisonment, which actually amounted to slow death in a spacious grave like this vault, or in the mines of Siberia, was the usual doom of men charged with “crimes” like his. His future yawned before him in the form of a black, boundless cavern charged with dull, gnawing pain, like the pain that was choking him at this moment. The worst part of his torture was his solitude. The most inhuman physical suffering seemed easier to bear than this speechless, endless, excruciatingly monotonous solitude of his. “Oath-men” as the sworn-in attendants of theprison were called (under-sized, comical looking fellows, most of them) came into his cell three or four times a day—with food, or to put things to rights hastily—but neither they nor the gendarmes who invariably accompanied them ever answered his questions. One morning, in anexcessof self-commiseration and resentment at their stolid taciturnity, he had spat in the face of a gendarme. He had done so, at the peril of being flogged, in the hope of hearing him curse, at least; but the gendarme merely wiped his bewhiskered face and went on watching the “oath-man” silently.
Whenever Pavel was taken out for his 15-minute walk in a secluded little yard, which was once in two days, the sentinels he met would turn their backs on him, lest he should see more faces than was absolutely necessary. The warden and the prison doctor were the only human beings whose voices he could hear, and these were brutally laconic and brutally rude or ironical with him. To be taken to the prison office for an examination by the procureur was the one diversion which the near future held out to him; but then his near future might be a matter of weeks and might be a matter of months.
Back and forth he walked, at a spiritless, even pace, as monotonous as his days of gloom and misery, as that dull pain which was ceaselessly choking his throat and gnawing at his heart. At one moment he paused and felt his gums with his fingers. Were they swollen? Was he developing scurvy? Or was it mere imagination? He also passed his hand over his cheeks, and it seemed to him that they were sunken a little more than they had been the day before. But the great subject of his thoughts to-day was his mother, and tantalising, heart-crushing thoughts they were. Where was she? How was she? Was she alive at all? He picturedher committing suicide because of his doom, and the cruel vision persisted. And if she was not dead, her life was little better than death. He tried to think of something else, but no, the appealing, reproachful image of his mother, of his poor dear mother who had scarcely had a day of happiness since she married, would not leave his mind. As a matter of fact, his efforts to think of something else were scarcely sincere. He would not shake that image out of his brain if he could. It was tearing his heart to pieces, yet he would rather stand all these tortures than shut his mother out of his thoughts. To talk to somebody was the only thing that could have saved him from the terrible pang that was harrowing him at this moment; but the chimes of the cathedral, which played the quarter-hours as well as the hours, and the crash of iron bolts at the opening of cells at meal-time were the only sounds that he could expect to hear to-day. His heart was writhing within him. Something was clutching at his brain. He seemed to feel himself going mad. He was tempted to cry at the top of his voice; to cry like a wild beast; but, of course, he was not going to give such satisfaction to the enemy.
He gazed at the sloping window-sill. For the thousandth time a desire took hold of him to mount it and take a look through the glass; and for the thousandth time he cast a hopeless glance at his bed, at the table, the chair, the wash-stand: they were all nailed to the floor, a large earthen water-cup and a salt-cellar made of lead being the only movable things in his room.
Four months ago there had been a prisoner in the adjoining cell with whom he carried on long conversations by rapping out his words on the wall, but one day their talk had been interrupted in the middle of a sentence, after which that man had been removed. The cell had long remainedempty, as could be inferred from the fact that Pavel never heard its door opened at meal-time. Since a week ago it had been tenanted again, but all his attempts at conversation with his new neighbour had so far been futile. His taps on the wall had been left unanswered.
Suddenly, as he was now pacing his floor, his heart melting with homesickness and anguish at the thought of his mother, he heard a rapid succession of fine, dry sounds on the right wall. He started, and, breathless and flushed with excitement, he listened. “Who are you?” the mould-grown wall demanded.
Pavel cast a look at the peephole in the heavy door, and seeing no eye in it, he took a turn or two up and down the room and stopped hard by the wall, upon which he rapped out his reply:
“Boulatoff. Who are you?”
“The Emperor of all Africa,” came the answer.
“What?” Pavel asked in perplexity. “You have not finished your sentence, what were you saying?”
“Begone!” the wall returned. “How dare you doubt my title? I am the Emperor of all Africa. How dare you speak to me? Away with you!”
Pavel’s heart sank. It was apparently some political prisoner who had gone insane in a damp, cold, isolated cell.
“Dear friend, dear comrade!” he implored. “Can’t you try and remember your name?”
“Begone, or I’ll order your arrest, mean slave that you are!” This was followed by some incoherencies. Pavel went away from the wall with tears in his eyes.
In the afternoon of the third day he was striding to and fro, in excellent spirits. He had been in this mood since he opened his eyes that morning. Nothing but the most encouraging moments in the history of his connection withthe movement would come to his mind to-day. He felt as though he and all his revolutionary friends were looking at each other, and conversing mentally, all as cheerful and happy as he was now. Everything pointed toward the speedy triumph of their cause. He beheld barricades in the streets of St. Petersburg, Moscow, Odessa; he saw the red flag waving; he heard the Marseillaise. He recalled Makar’s vision of the time when victorious revolutionists would break into the fortress of Peter and Paul and take its prisoners out to celebrate the advent of liberty with the people. He thought of Clara, and his heart went out to her and to their interrupted honeymoon; he imagined her on his arm marching with others, he did not know whither, and whispering words of love and exultation to her, and once more his heart leaped with joy. He recalled jokes, comical situations. He felt like bursting into a roar of merriment, when there came a shower of taps on the wall.
“Who are you?”
“Boulatoff,” Pavel answered, with sadness in his heart. He expected other absurdities from his insane neighbour. “And you?”
“Bieliayeff. I am not well. But I feel much better to-day. My lucid interval, perhaps. I remember everything.”
Pavel had met him two years before. They talked of themselves, of their mutual friends, of the last news that had reached Bieliayeff through his other wall. It appeared that Bieliayeff’s neighbour on that side of his cell was Elkin.
Pavel received the information with a thrill of pleasure. He was going to ask Bieliayeff to convey a message to his fellow townsman; but at this he had an instinctive feeling that there was an eye at the peephole and he dropped his hand to his side, pretending to be absorbed in thought.
They resumed their conversation a quarter of an hour later.
“Tell Elkin I love him; he is dear to me,” Pavel tapped out. “I feel guilty and miserable. If it were not for me he would be in America now. Besides, I have been unjust to him. This oppresses me more than anything else.”
These communications through the wall are the most precious things life has to offer in living graves like those of the fortress of Peter and Paul. The inmate of such a grave will listen to the messages of his neighbours with the most strenuous attention, with every faculty in his possession, with every fibre of his being; and he will convey every word of a long message as if reading it from a written memorandum.
After a lapse of five or ten minutes Bieliayeff came back with Elkin’s answer.
“He says he loves you,” the tap-tap said, “and that it is he who ought to apologise. It was he who was unjust. As to his American scheme, he is happy to be here. It is sweet to be suffering for liberty, he says.”
Makar was at the other end of the same corridor, and a message from him reached Pavel by way of a dozen walls.
“Hello, old boy!” it said. “At last I have completed the revolutionary programme I have been so long engaged upon. It’s a dandy! It is not the same I spoke to you about in Moscow. It covers every point beautifully. It would save the party from every mistake it has ever made or is liable to make.”
One day Pavel learned that Clara had arrived in the fortress, after a long confinement and no end of examinationsin Miroslav. She was in another part of the building and communicating with her was impossible. Pavel scarcely ever thought of anything else. Could it be true that she was in the building and he would not even have a chance to see her? He was fidgeting and writhing like a bird in a cage.
At last, on a morning, the wall brought him a message from her. It had come through walls, floors and ceilings.
“Clanya sends her love,” it ran, “and tells him to keep away from the damp walls as much as possible.”
“Tell Clanya I think of her day and night,” he rapped back.
Then a footstep sounded at his door, and with a heart swelling with emotion he threw himself upon his bed and buried his face in his hands.
THE END.
FOOTNOTES:[A]A classical Russian high school modelled after its German namesake.[B]Affectionate diminutive of Vladimir.[C]Diminutive of Alexander.[D]A sign of contempt and defiance consisting in the thumb being put between the next two fingers.[E]Diminutive of Olga.
[A]A classical Russian high school modelled after its German namesake.
[A]A classical Russian high school modelled after its German namesake.
[B]Affectionate diminutive of Vladimir.
[B]Affectionate diminutive of Vladimir.
[C]Diminutive of Alexander.
[C]Diminutive of Alexander.
[D]A sign of contempt and defiance consisting in the thumb being put between the next two fingers.
[D]A sign of contempt and defiance consisting in the thumb being put between the next two fingers.
[E]Diminutive of Olga.
[E]Diminutive of Olga.
Transcriber's Note:Most inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation found in the original text were retained, including:"assistant procureur" and "assistant-procureur""ball-room" and "ball room""bedroom" and "bed-room""candlestick" and "candle-stick""capmaker" and "cap-maker""Catherine" and "Catharine""Chernishevsky" and "Chernyshevsky""cobblestones" and "cobble-stones""colour" and "color""drily" and "dryly""favourite" and "favorite""featherbeds" and "feather-beds""fiascos" and "fiascoes""footsteps" and "foot-steps""grey" and "gray""heartfelt" and "heart-felt""homebound" and "home-bound""laborer" and "labourer""market place" and "market-place""neighbour" and "neighbor""odour" and "odor""organisation" and "organization""parlour" and "parlor""pedlar" and "peddlar""peephole" and "peep-hole""realise" and "realize""regime" and "régime""reverie" and "revery""Rodkevitch" and "Rodkevich""rumour" and "rumor""side whiskers" and "side-whiskers""stepchild" and "step-child""topboots" and "top-boots""tramcar" and "tram-car""trunkmaker" and "trunk-maker""undersized" and "under-sized""Vice-Emperor" and "vice-Emperor""wagons" and "waggons""waiting room" and "waiting-room""woolen" and "woollen"The following is a list of corrections made to the original. The first passage is the original passage, the second the corrected one.Page 5:Don’t take it ill,ma chere.” SheDon’t take it ill,ma chère.” ShePage 8:the present Czar, then stillCzarowitch,the present Czar, then stillCzarowitz,Page 15:pulling at hiswaistcoastas thoughpulling at hiswaistcoatas thoughPage 16:and in hisecstacyoverand in hisecstasyoverPage 23:Venus deMedicis—and theVenus deMedici—and thePage 34:theiressence?For thetheiressence?”For thePage 36:who sawAlexanderAlexandrovich offwho sawAlexandreAlexandrovich offPage 44:myteriousair of the “radicals”mysteriousair of the “radicals”Page 44:one number ofForwardand anotherone number ofForward!and anotherPage 47:nunnishfaceShe made quitenunnishface.She made quitePage 65:restrain the “idoticbreadth” of hisrestrain the “idioticbreadth” of hisPage 68:trimmed whiskersa láAlexander II.,trimmed whiskersà laAlexander II.,Page 95:on the part ofAlexandreII.on the part ofAlexanderII.Page 104:beamingat sightof thebeamingat the sightof thePage 104:in turning thecosversationin turning theconversationPage 114:PavelVassilyevitch. EverythingPavelVassilyevich. EverythingPage 130:“Exactly,”Pavalassented,“Exactly,”Pavelassented,Page 137:as many asthree fourthsof themas many asthree-fourthsof themPage 145:view ofit.At thisview ofit.”At thisPage 146:Olga, theJudge, and theOlga, thejudge, and thePage 151:house fortête-a-têtepurposes.house fortête-à-têtepurposes.Page 163:imprisoned armyofficer,slipped awayimprisoned armyofficerslipped awayPage 166:Their immediatesurroundingwereTheir immediatesurroundingswerePage 167:minaturegarden betweenminiaturegarden betweenPage 186:well-travelledfellowHe canwell-travelledfellow.He canPage 215:she says.“Youhave ashe says.Youhave aPage 219:dwelt on Zola’sL’Assomoiranddwelt on Zola’sL’AssommoirandPage 231:a hurriedbood-byeand made fora hurriedgood-byeand made forPage 242:Meanwhile CountLoris MelikoffhadMeanwhile CountLoris-MelikoffhadPage 248:speakLittlie-Russian to Purring Cat,speakLittle-Russian to Purring Cat,Page 248:fromLittlieRussia, answeredfromLittleRussia, answeredPage 249:by the the “gaybard,” which Claraby the “gaybard,” which ClaraPage 252:still inLavadiawith his bride,still inLivadiawith his bride,Page 254:his heart with cruelinsistance.his heart with cruelinsistence.Page 267:residence, theMichailPalace,residence, theMichaïlPalace,Page 275:your furcap”she gestured.your furcap,”she gestured.Page 283:the Little Gardenstreetprecinctthe Little GardenStreetprecinctPage 286:Gardenstreetfor the Czar'sGardenStreetfor the Czar'sPage 288:Adistinquishedrevolutionary writerAdistinguishedrevolutionary writerPage 289:cheese shop on Little Gardenstreetcheese shop on Little GardenStreetPage 294:“Don’t”he begged them,“Don’t,”he begged them,Page 305:the prisoncorridor,answered histhe prisoncorridoranswered hisPage 326:such acap?”says I.such acap?’says I.Page 333:whispered in thespokeman’searwhispered in thespokesman’searPage 335:Finally he shoutedhuskily.Finally he shoutedhuskily:Page 366:near Nicholasstreet, the bestnear NicholasStreet, the bestPage 368:about Nicholasstreetand bore downabout NicholasStreetand bore downPage 373:crowd on Cucumbermarket, andcrowd on CucumberMarket, andPage 374:primitive humanityranamuckprimitive humanityrunamuckPage 376:Nicholasstreet, from a residenceNicholasStreet, from a residencePage 380:themauraudersfor the slashersthemaraudersfor the slashersPage 382:crowbars,bannersor axescrowbars,hammersor axesPage 387:revoltingstupourof inebriety.revoltingstuporof inebriety.Page 391:trying tosoothan angry baby.trying tosoothean angry baby.Page 395:One day Hannah said,gravely.One day Hannah said,gravely:Page 403:street, St. Petersburg, wasStreet, St. Petersburg, wasPage 415:in a sunnyspotin a sunnyspot.Page 420:There is aStPetersburgThere is aSt.PetersburgPage 425:in anaccessof self-commiserationin anexcessof self-commiseration
Transcriber's Note:
Most inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation found in the original text were retained, including:
The following is a list of corrections made to the original. The first passage is the original passage, the second the corrected one.