HOW ONE WENT FORTH ALONE
So, in due course, Hope Arskaïa became Hope Palma, and no littleness
of mind imputes to Paul Pavlof from the fact that, when he got the
offer of a small medical appointment in Moscow, he accepted it
instantly, and Odessa knew him no more. He was very human, and he
loved Hope Arskaïa to the very depths of his aching heart.
Consideration for his own peace of mind might not have carried him to
this final extremity of exile. He might, indeed, have found a gloomy
satisfaction, something not very far removed from a flagellant
pleasure, in watching her from afar, meeting her occasionally, and
nursing in secret the thought that her heart had surely been his
before she consummated her great self-sacrifice to duty by becoming
Palma's wife.
But he was too big a man for that. If Hope could sacrifice herself
for her life's work, so he could sacrifice himself for love of her.
It would indeed have been a sore trial to any man to watch from the
outer darkness the happiness which, under equal circumstances, might
have been his.
If he had seen any possibility of service to Hope he would have
suffered and rejoiced. But there was no visible call for sympathy on
Hope's account after her marriage with Palma. She seemed quite
contented, nay, even happy, and Pavlof, pondering this strange matter
in the light of a deeper understanding of her than most, imputed to
her neither lightness nor forgetfulness.
He had known her better than any, and he knew that, compared with the
work which she looked upon as an inheritance of sacred obligation
from her father, her own well-being, prosperity, happiness, were as
nothing and less than nothing.
To some it may seem that altruism so complete as this is visionary
and overdrawn. The history of the evolutionary movement in Russia
has given us many examples. Not that I would, for one moment, be
supposed to hint that Russia monopolises, or even possesses in higher
degree than other countries, this mighty force of self-sacrifice.
But, in happier lands, the self-sacrificing dree their weirds below
the level surface of life, obscure and unknown; whereas, in Russia,
their lives and sufferings and deaths are, by force of circumstances,
flashed luridly on the screen and set the startled world aghast at
times.
He saw that she was contented in her new life. His presence in
Odessa could afford her no pleasure, might even cause her a twinge of
regret at times, for, with all the will in the world, a quiet face
was all he could compass, and cheerfulness was hardly to be expected
of him.
So he called upon her once after her marriage, to say farewell, and
then he went away to Moscow.
He might have denied himself even this visit, and he debated the
matter within himself for some time before deciding on it. Then it
seemed to him that Hope might reasonably feel hurt by such avoidance,
and by such a lapse from the ordinary rules of courtesy, and he went.
Old Masha had followed her mistress into the new life. She received
him with all the old friendly favour which would have put him in
Palma's place if the turning of the wheel had rested with her.
"I will tell her you are here, Paul Ivanuitch," said Masha, scanning
his face, woman-like, for sign of his feeling, but lingering still.
"I am going away to Moscow, Marya. I have come to say goodbye."
"Ach!" said old Masha knowingly, and stood looking at him.
"Tell me, Marya. Is she happy?"
"Yes, she is happy, Paul Ivanuitch," and added quickly, "but you know
she is not like others. It is not of herself she thinks. It is a
terrible great change," she said, waving her simple old hands at the
sumptuous appointments of the room. "I am almost afraid to speak
aloud at times, it is all so fine. But it doesn't trouble her one
bit, and it is not that she cares for. It seems to me sometimes that
we have half the poor people of the city on our hands, and there are
fresh ones every day."
"And Palma is good to--to you, Marya?" he asked, with an almost
imperceptible quiver of the lip, which old Marya did not fail to
catch, though her eyes were not as strong as they were once. She
knew so well all that lay behind it.
"He is very good, Paul Ivanuitch. He is a bigger man than I thought.
He is very generous. My God! how the money goes! I am afraid in the
night sometimes that it will come to an end, but there is always
plenty next day. I did not know any one had so much money."
"I will send you my address in Moscow, Marya. If ever I can do
anything for--for you--or for her, will you promise to let me know?"
"Surely. It is good to know one has a friend to turn to. Now sit
down and I will tell her you are here."
He did not sit down, but stood looking at the big oil paintings on
the wall--Prince Peter, and Serge's mother, and Serge himself when he
was a small boy. And the rich hangings to the windows and doors, and
the carved table and buffet and chairs, stole in upon his senses
without his knowingly looking at them, though he remembered them all
afterwards, because they were the things she lived among. And then
the door opened, and he was face to face with Hope herself.
She was looking very well, very bright and cheerful, more richly
dressed than he had ever seen her, more beautiful than ever.
His face was thinner even than it used to be, and his deep eyes
deeper, and keener, and more ardent, she thought, but just the same
straight, honest eyes that always met your own frankly and squarely,
and held no equivocations. Perhaps there was something of a shadow
in them now, but it might be only that they looked deeper in their
settings than before. In truth there was in them the shadow of a
slight reserve to which she had not been accustomed. For in spite of
himself he felt a touch of resentment at her cheerfulness, and a
touch of anger with himself for so feeling.
"You are going away, Paul Ivanuitch?" said Hope, when she had greeted
him.
"I am going to Moscow, Hope Ivanovna. I have got an appointment
there. It is not much, but it may lead to more."
"You will be missed here. Will you still be able to carry on the
work there?"
"Oh, surely. I hope to have still larger opportunities. My work
will lie among the very poor, and there is never any lack of them."
"It would grieve me to think of you dropping it."
"I will carry it on as you would have it, Hope Ivanovna, as long as I
am able. When you have set it in one's heart it would be as hard to
drop it as it would be to forget yourself."
"There is so much to be done and so few to do it," she said earnestly.
"You are always busy?"
"Always busy."
"And quite happy?"
"Quite happy. I have no time for anything else."
"I am glad," he said quietly. "If ever I can serve you in any
smallest thing, I beg of you to let me know."
"There is no one I would sooner turn to for help, Paul, if that time
should ever come. I wish----"
She looked wistfully at him, and he knew that she was wishing it was
in her power to do something to brighten his own path in life. But
the only thing she could have done she had not seen well to do, and
nothing else was possible.
"God be with you, Hope Ivanovna, and give you every good." He
stooped and kissed her hand, and she bent and kissed his forehead.
"Would you not stop and see Serge----"
"No, I thank you, Hope Ivanovna. I leave to-night, and I still have
some calls to make," and he was gone.
She told Palma of his visit, when he came in, and he, in his hearty
way, regretted that she had not kept him to dinner.
"It's ages since we met, and we used to be good friends at one time.
Let me see--" and his eyes rested thoughtfully on Hope's face, as he
cast back in his mind--"yes--I don't think Pavlof and I have met
since our marriage. I suppose that was it. I don't believe Paul
Ivanuitch has ever quite forgiven me for carrying off the prize. But
really, you know, I was not to blame. Was I now?"
"No, you were not to blame, Serge, and I'm quite sure Paul Ivanuitch
bears no malice. He will be very lonely in Moscow. I cannot help
feeling sorry for him."
"Oh, he'll soon make heaps of friends."
But Hope knew better, and her own great happiness set his lonely way
in deeper shadow in her thoughts.
For she was happy. In marrying Serge Palma she had given but small
consideration to her own feelings. And Palma, perfectly aware of
that, had set himself diligently to win her to himself.
He had tried at first, in the quietest and most unobtrusive manner
possible, to introduce into her life new elements of interest, which
might, he hoped, in time wean her from those labours among the poor
and downtrodden which she looked upon as her great work in life.
His manner of life had been, in almost every respect, the very
opposite of hers. He had always had more money than he could use.
He had always flung it about generously. He had never had to scrimp
and save in his life, and self-denial was as absolutely unknown to
him as the absence of the necessity for it was unknown to his wife.
Whereby no doubt he had missed much, and had been to that extent
docked of his full stature.
He treated Hope with the greatest generosity, gave her everything he
thought she could possibly want, which included very much which she
did not want at all, and in every possible way showed her that the
one desire of his heart was to win her completely, and so round their
union into a perfect circle of happiness.
In order to win her to his own ways, he found it advisable at times
to go hand in hand with her along her chosen paths. And, bit by bit,
for very love of her, he found himself going further than ever he had
dreamed of going. For very love of her he found himself first
tolerating, then enjoying, this new way of life because it was her
way. Hers was the finer spirit, and by degrees he came to look
through her eyes at matters which had lain under his nose all his
life, but which he had never seen until his love for her quickened
his understanding.
She was a whole new world to him, a sweet apocalypse, and, by
degrees, those things which had sufficed him before came to be as
nothing and less than nothing to him.
The change was very gradual, but it could not fail in time to attract
the attention of those who sorely missed the jovial dispenser of
largesse in Palma's former circles. His old friends chaffed him and
laughed at him. He invited them to dinner and they fell under the
spell of Madame Palma's beauty, to the extent, at all events, of
swearing in marvellous language that Serge Palma was a mighty
fortunate man. And if they still chaffed him at times, for his
dereliction from their primrosy paths, his quiet smile turned all
their shafts aside and even lodged them in their own bosoms. Not a
man of them but would have done any mortal thing Madame Palma might
have asked of him, however contrary to his natural inclination. But
Hope had very soon taken their shallow measures, and not one of them
did she find worth using in her great work.
For that work, while patently and undeniably of the most harmless
description, and with no end or aim beyond the uplifting of the
helpless and downtrodden, was still work at which the authorities
looked doubtfully, if not actually askance, and it needed for its
furtherance large souls who could be at once energetic and cautious
and discriminating.
Even in such simple work as this there ran a vein of danger, in the
fact that the downtrodden, when they awake to a sense of their
condition, and of the causes of it, are liable to fits of fierce
resentment; and at times fiery spirits will out and kindle
conflagrations the stifling of which entails far-reaching
consequences and suffering. And at such times the innocent are as
like to suffer as the guilty--more like, perhaps, since the latter,
with their foreknowledge of coming events, can also provide ways of
escape.
Palma was redeeming to the full the promise he had made to Hope when
he asked her to marry him. In her simple schemes of amelioration he
was with her to the extent of her will. Against anything beyond he
set his face like a flint, as indeed she did herself.
The people were nominally free, but they were not educated up to
freedom. It was her aim, as it had been her father's, to lift them
out of the sloughs, so that in due time they should be able to put
their unknown powers to noblest uses. But as to any violent and
precipitant exhibition of these as yet immatured powers, they never
ceased to warn their poor folk with all the strength that was in
them; and their poor folk met their warnings with vehement denial of
any remotest thought of any such intentions, and talked among
themselves afterwards in ways that would have given Serge Palma
nightmares in powder magazines if he had dreamt of them.
He regarded some of her agents with considerable doubt, though she
had chosen them with the utmost care and discrimination, and had
tried them well before she leaned to any extent upon them.
"Now that fellow Petrof, Hope? Do you feel quite safe with him?" he
asked her one day, when Dmitri of that name had come creeping up to
beg Hope Ivanovna's assistance for Katerina, wife of Nicholas Korba.
Katerina was expecting to be laid up, and her husband had managed to
get into the hands of the police.
"I've known him a very long time now, Serge, and I have never found
him take a kopeck for himself of what I have given him for other
people."
"I wish he'd make more noise when he walks," said Palma, smiling
himself at the meagreness of his grounds for disliking Dmitri. "He
goes along like a snake, and it's all I can do to keep from putting
my foot on him."
"He is very quiet. But, you see, they learnt to be that in the old
times, and some of them can't get out of it."
"Well, we can only trust in Providence that they put the money you
give them to the uses you intend."
"Where I give money they are mostly in such want that they would
grudge it being used for anything else. But you are quite right,
Serge. There is a risk, and I don't see how we can eliminate it more
than we are doing by exercising every possible care and watchfulness.
You assumed a great responsibility when you took over me and my work."
"I have never regretted it, my dear, and never shall, whatever comes
or goes. You have opened the eyes of my understanding. In time I do
believe you will make a fairly good man of me."
"You are very good to me, and to give up so much for me, Serge. You
are a bigger man than I thought."
"With such a teacher who could fail to grow? I have only one regret
in life, and that is that I cannot make you Tzarina and give you a
free hand to work your fullest will."
"I wish you could. But the one without the other would be very
little use. It is not the Tzar or Tzarina who obstruct, but those
below them. And how they will ever be brought round I do not know."
"Well, all I want is that we should so carry on the work that it may
not bring us into collision with the powers that be, for in that case
the work would suffer check. We also, perhaps."
"Our intentions are good, at all events," she said thoughtfully, "and
for the rest, as you say, we can only trust in Providence."
"Ah, my dear, good intentions they say, pave the road to--Siberia,"
he said, with a smile. "But we'll do our best to keep on the right
side of that line, at all events."