The White Terror and The Red Part 13

There is n.o.body around." When they reached the low-ceiled parlor, she sank her voice and said solemnly, yet with a certain note of triumph: "He was arrested at four o'clock yesterday on the railway tracks. The gendarme office had information that he was in the habit of taking walks there. I happened to be away--think of it! At a time like that I was away. Else I should have let you know at once, of course. Anyhow, he's there."

"You say it as if it was something to rejoice in," Pavel remarked, disguising his rage. "It's quite a serious matter, Maria Gavrilovna."

Mlle. Safonoff stared. "But we'll get him out. Why, are you afraid we mayn't? I see you're depressed and that makes me miserable, too. Really it does."

"Do I look depressed? Well, I must confess I rather am. It's no laughing matter, Maria Gavrilovna," he said, flushing.

"Oh, well, if you are going to talk like that. That is I myself haven't the slightest doubt about it. Only you frighten me so. If this thing is going to last another week it will drive me mad." Her childish eyes shone with tears. "Why should you take such a gloomy view of it? I must say it's cruel of you, Pavel Va.s.silyevich. Everything is just as I expected. He is as good as free, I a.s.sure you."

Pavel answered, by way of consoling himself as well as her: "Well, maybe I do take it too hard. Our chances seem to be good, and--well, we must get him out. That's all there is to it."

"Of course we must. Now I like you, Boulatoff. We must and we will, and when the story is published--oh, I do wish we could get out special proclamations!--anyhow, won't it make a stir!" She paused and then resumed, in a new burst of frankness, "I know what makes you uneasy about me. The great trouble with me is my lack of tact, isn't it? If I had that I would be all right. That's what worries you about me in this affair, isn't it, now? You're afraid I may make a mess of the whole business. I know you are. Well, and I don't blame you, either. The Safonoffs have never been distinguished for their heads. When it happens to be a matter of hearts, we hold our own, but brains, well--." She gave a laugh. "I tell you what, Boulatoff, I'm afraid of you, and I don't care to bear the brunt of this important affair. Anyhow, I want you to keep an eye on me. I'll do all you want me to, but you must take the responsibility off my shoulders, else I'll go crazy. What makes you smile? You think I'm crazy already, don't you?"

"I wasn't smiling at all. So far you have managed things beautifully. I confess I'm getting impatient. Well, I do feel wretched, Maria Gavrilovna."

She grasped his hand, shook it silently and whispered: "Don't be uneasy.

We shall win."

When Safonoff came home at the lunch hour he told of the excitement at the gendarme office. His manner toward Boulatoff was a non-committal mixture which seemed to say: "You and I understand each other perfectly, don't we? Still, if you think you can get me to call a spade a spade or to help you you are mistaken."

His compact, well-fed figure had the shape of a plum. He was perpetually mimicking somebody or chuckling and his speech was full of gaps, many of his sentences being rendered in dumb show.

"My chief may get in trouble for having ordered the arrest too soon," he said. "We were to let the prisoner--" (he brandished his hand to represent a man going around at large) "for some time, so as to let him show us with whom he is acquainted. But my chief--" (he struck an att.i.tude meant to caricature a decrepit, coughing, old fellow) "was all of a tremble for fear the canary-bird might take wing. You see he had never arrested a political before. You should have seen our men when we took that chap on the railroad track. They were more frightened than he, I a.s.sure you, prince. They thought he was going to--" (he aimed an imaginary dagger at Pavel and burst into laughter). "Monsieur Unknown is certainly no coward whatever else he may be. You should have seen the look of surprise and contempt he gave me!"

Pavel beamed while Masha's face wore a pained expression. "It's time you had left this nasty business of yours, Andrusha," she said.

When Andrusha reached the a.s.sistant procureur's part in the case he sketched off a pompous imbecile. There was no love lost between the public attorney and the gendarme officers, so Safonoff described, with many a gurgle of merriment, how, during the attempted examination of the prisoner, Zendorf, the a.s.sistant procureur (he burlesqued an obeisance as the epitome of sn.o.bbishness) had tried to impress his uniformed rivals with his intellectual and social superiority.

"You see, my chief is a rough and ready sort of customer. Whatever else he may be, frills and fakes are not in his line. So he went right at it.

'Speak up,' he squeaked at the prisoner, 'speak up, or I'll have your mouth opened for you.' So Zendorf called him gently to order and fixed his dignified peepers at the prisoner. He expected to cast some sort of spell over him, I suppose, but it was no go. As to me, I was just choking. As bad luck would have it I took it into my head at that moment that the best way to make that fellow talk would be to have his armpits tickled till he roared. Well, I had to leave the room to have my giggle out."

Safonoff was indifferent to his sister's revolutionary ventures because he never vividly realised the danger she incurred. His mind retained the most lifelike impressions, but its sensitiveness was of the photographic kind; it was confined to actual experiences. He had no imagination for the future. He was an easy-going man, incapable of fear. People often arrived at the conclusion that he was "a fool after all." But then there are fools who are endowed with a keen perception and a lively sense of character.

Speaking of the warden of the jail, Safonoff impersonated a cringing, hand-kissing, crafty time-server. He had never met a convert Jew or convert Pole who was not an adventurer and an all-round knave, he said, and Rodkevitch was the most typical convert Pole he had ever come across. The sight of money took his breath away, gave him the vertigo, made his eyes start from their sockets. Rustle a crisp paper ruble in his ear and he will faint away.

"He's a candidate for Siberia anyhow and he needs money to pull him out of some of the roguish schemes he is tangled up in. The contractors who furnish his prisoners sand for flour and garbage for potatoes are his partners in some of his outside swindles also. Do you understand, prince?" The question was put with special emphasis, which Pavel interpreted as a direct hint at the possibility of bribing the warden.

It occurred to Boulatoff that Makar's luggage was quite likely to contain some incriminating papers or other things that might aggravate the case. To fear this in view of Makar's notorious absent-mindedness was quite reasonable. But this was not all. He had been bent upon making his arrest as important in the eyes of the Third Section as possible, and Pavel was almost certain he had left something in his lodgings on purpose. "You never know what you are at with a crazy, obstinate bull-dog like that," he thought in a qualm of anxiety.

When Safonoff had gone Pavel wrote a note to his imprisoned friend asking for the address of his lodgings.

"Can you get this to him, and an answer brought back?" he demanded of Mlle. Safonoff in a peremptory tone.

"I think so. My aunt will probably get it through. I am almost sure of it, in fact."

"There you are. You're _almost_ sure. Was this enough to let a man put himself in the hands of the Third Section?"

Mlle. Safonoff hurried out of the house in dumb dismay. After an interval of less than an hour, which to Pavel seemed a year, she burst into the parlour, accompanied by an older woman, whom she introduced as her aunt, Daria Stepanovna Shubeyko. Both were breathless with excitement. They had the desired address, the sum Makar owed his landlady and another note to the landlady. Pavel's heart swelled with joy and grat.i.tude, but he did not show it.

"Very well," he said, with a preoccupied scowl. "And now for that trunk of his."

The two women went on to describe, continually interrupting each other, their plans for setting Makar free, but Pavel checked them.

"We'll discuss it all afterwards," he said. "What we need at this minute is a coa.r.s.e suit of clothes, something to make a fellow look like a workman or porter. We must clear his room before his landlady has notified the police of his disappearance." The costume was brought by Masha. When Pavel emerged from the major's bedroom transformed into a laborer, Masha's aunt applauded so violently that he could not resist gnashing his teeth at her.

"Excuse me, but I've never seen a real man of action before," she pleaded. "Now I feel newly born, really I do. I tell you what, Boulatoff, I'll go with you. In case of trouble I may be of some use, you know. We can't afford to let an active man like you perish."

"But then if you perish," Pavel answered gayly, "there won't be anybody to arrange that escape."

"That's true," she replied forlornly. She was a healthy, good-looking woman with a smile so exultantly silly that Pavel could not bear to look at it. Every time that smile of hers brightened her full-blooded face, he dropped his eyes.

There was the risk of his being recognised by somebody in the street.

Then, too, Makar's lodgings might have been discovered by the police and made a trap of. The errand was full of risks, but this only stimulated a feeling in which Pavel's pa.s.sion for this sort of adventure was coupled with a desire to vindicate himself before his own conscience by sharing in Makar's dangers.

The trip was devoid of all adventure, however. Even his meeting with his mother was lost on him. He was sincerely contemplating the blind beggar at that moment.

Makar's landlady was a garrulous Jewess. When she learned that her lodger had been taken ill at the house of a friend and that the workingman had been sent for his things and to pay the bill, she launched out into an effusion of bad Russian that taxed Pavel's patience sorely. She exacted the address of Makar's friend, so as to send the patient some of her marvellous preserves. The prince left with the trunk on his shoulder--an excellent contrivance for screening his face from view--but it proved too heavy, and when he came across a truckman who agreed to take him and his load part of the way to his destination he was glad to be relieved of the burden.

While he was in the next room, shedding his disguise, Masha's aunt bombarded him with impatient shouts and giggles. When he had opened the trunk at last she insisted upon helping him examine its contents, whereupon she handled each article she lifted out as she might a holy relic; and when the trunk proved to contain nothing of a compromising quality even Pavel felt disappointed. Mme. Shubeyko overwhelmed him with questions, one of which was:

"Look here, Boulatoff, why shouldn't the people rise and put an end to the rule of despotism at once? What on earth are we waiting for?"

"If the people were all like you they would have done so long ago," he answered, with a hearty laugh. He warmed to her in an amused way and felt like calling her auntie; only that smile of hers continued to annoy him.

CHAPTER XIV.

UNDERGROUND MIROSLAV.

Pavel dined at the major's house. He was in high spirits, but the hour of his expected meeting with the girl of the Pievakin demonstration was drawing near, and his impatience was getting keener every minute. He reached the place, a little house occupied by a government clerk named Orlovsky and his mother, ahead of time.

"Your name is Boulatoff, is it not?" asked the host, his square Slavic nose curling up with the joy of his welcome. Then, crouching before the absurdest looking samovar Pavel had ever seen, he explained that his mother had gone to his sister's for the night, as she did very often to avoid the noise of his gatherings. In the centre of a bare round table lay an enormous loaf of rye bread and a great wedge of sugar, near which stood an empty candy box, apparently used as a sugar bowl. Pavel divined that at least one-half of Orlovsky's salary was spent on the tea, bread and b.u.t.ter on which his guests regaled themselves while they talked liberty.

"I'm only a private of the revolution," Orlovsky said, trying to blow two charcoals into flame until his face glowed like the coals and his eyes looked bleared. "But if there is anything I can do command me." At his instance the two addressed each other in the familiar diminutives of their Christian names--"Pasha" and "Aliosha." While Aliosha was struggling with his smoking samovar, Pasha set to work cutting up the sugar.

"Wait till you have seen our crowd," said Aliosha, flicking the open side of an old top-boot at the samovar by way of bellows. "I tell you Miroslav is destined to play a prominent part in the liberation of Russia. We have some tip-top fellows and girls. Of course, we're mere privates in the ranks of the revolution."

But Pavel's mind was on the speaker's sackcoat of checkered grey, which was so tight on him that his prominent thighs were bulging out and the garment seemed on the point of bursting. The sight of it annoyed Pavel in the same way as Mme. Shubeyko's smile had done, and he asked Orlovsky why he should not unb.u.t.ton himself, to which the other answered, half in jest, half in earnest, that he was getting so fat that he was beginning to look "like a veritable bourgeois, deuce take it."

"But it makes a fellow uncomfortable to look at you," Pavel shouted, irascibly.

"Ah, but that's a question of personal liberty, old man," Orlovsky returned in all seriousness. "What right have you, for instance, to impose upon me rules as to how I am to wear my coat?"

"That right which limits the liberty of one man by the liberty of other men. But this is all foolishness, Aliosha. Upon my word it is. The days of hair-splitting are dead and buried. There is plenty of work to do--living, practical work."