HOW THEY LIVED TOGETHER AND YET APART
As Hope had foreseen, the recovery of her health, sufficient at all
events to permit of her undertaking household duties, was the signal
for Madame Roskova's departure.
She had hinted at it many times, and had yielded as often to Hope's
earnest entreaties and remained.
"My dear," she would say of a night, with more than a suggestion of
reproof in her manner, "Serge Petrovitch and I have been very good
friends, and I am greatly beholden to him, but he will begin to hate
me soon if I keep you away from him like this. It is not in nature
and it is not right. If you really want me to stop, you two occupy
this room, and I will sleep on the hearth out there."
"No, no, Anna!" Hope would make haste to reply. "You must not go.
Serge is quite content and so am I, I do assure you. It is enough
for us that we are together," and then would she blush rosy red in
the merciful darkness and wonder if her soul was imperilled past
redemption by such unblushing lying.
And Anna Roskova said little but wondered much, and sighed for her
own lonely exile in Yakutsk, and thought again how different it would
have been with them, and deemed Hope but a cold wife.
But with returning health and the retuning of her jangled nerves,
Hope's outlook on life became to assume its normal aspect. Matters
began to settle themselves into their proper places and to take their
proper proportions. She saw that no one was to blame for what had
happened, that the strange mischance which had cast her into Pavlof's
keeping, while her husband wandered at large between Yeniseisk and
London, was the outcome of no plot, but a valiant attempt to benefit
her. She recovered her trust in herself and her faith in Paul
Pavlof. She saw that Pavlof was right, and that the only thing
possible to her was to wait patiently till they should hear from
Serge. And she set herself bravely to adapt herself to the required
conditions.
And so it was with a certain equanimity that she one day received
Madame Roskova's announcement that Marya Verskaïa was sick and had
begged her to come and stop with her, and she was going on the morrow.
"Da!" said Madame, when Hope raised no objection, but simply
expressed her regret at Marya's illness. "So you are reconciled to
him at last and don't mind my going! That is right and as it should
be, and I am glad of it."
"I am very, very grateful for all your kindness, Anna. I never can
forget all you have done for me. But--as you say----"
"Da, child! That is all right! I am rejoiced to think that all is
right again between you. I have thought you a stone, for the lack is
not on his part. He loves you as much as ever. He is on fire for
you, and no wonder. I can hear it in his voice when he speaks to
you, and see it in his eye when he looks at you. He just worships
you, my dear. So be you good to him, for he is a man beyond most."
And Hope knew it all and was troubled for him. For she knew that the
fire would never break forth to her undoing. It might burn and burn
till it consumed him, but the flame would never scorch her nor the
smoke besmirch.
"You will let me bring in some of the others now and then?" asked
Madame Roskova, before she went next day. "They are all hungry to
see you, and they will talk and talk and it will do none of you any
harm now. It has been all I could do to keep them away. But now you
are all right again----"
"Surely, Anna! I shall be glad to see them now. While I was lying
broken there it would have driven me crazy, but now I shall be glad."
So Madame Roskova squeezed into a corner of the little hut up the
valley with Marya Verskaïa and Dmitri Polokof, and sorely missed the
wider atmosphere of the doctor's house. For Marya had a lively
tongue, and her alleged sickness did not extend to it or in any way
affect it, and ceaseless chatter becomes at times a weariness to the
flesh, to say nothing of the soul.
Dmitri, when he heard of Madame Roskova's coming, breathed a silent
but fervent "God be thanked!" and welcomed her warmly. Marya
launched twenty questions at her concerning Madame Palma before she
had got her cloak off, and Anna, knowing her friend, replied with
discretion and supplied no grist but only chaff to Marya's chattering
little mill.
So Hope Palma and Paul Pavlof entered upon a new phase of the
strangely twisted story of their lives--a phase which tested and
tried them both in many ways, and was to Pavlof as the breaking of
seals and the dipping, chancily and hazardously, into the pages of
the unknown. He learnt much of woman and her ways, and at times it
set his head spinning, and at times twisted his heart-strings.
Learning is bitter-sweet; at times a deep delight, and again, a long
travail; and the understanding of even one woman was beyond the
wisdom of the Preacher whose experience had been wider than most.
They sat long before the stove in silence that first night of their
solitariness, both their minds running swiftly in the same direction
but on different lines.
When would they hear from Serge?
Would they ever hear from him?
Supposing they did not?
Supposing they heard of his death?
The silence was verging on the irksome when Pavlof broke it, in fear
that it might become painful to her.
"I am glad you let Anna Vassilievna go, Hope Ivanovna. It tells me
that you trust me."
"She has been very good to me and I shall always be grateful to her,
but----"
"Since you can trust yourself in my hands, it will make things easier
for you to be without her, I think."
"It would have been impossible to go on much longer like that."
"She is a good woman----"
"She was growing importunate about us. If we could only have told
her the whole matter--"
"A whisper of it getting out would have destroyed us all. Anna
Vassilievna is more trustworthy than most, but the matter is so very
strange that it would have been almost too much to expect her to keep
it entirely to herself. Even if she did not speak of it her manner
might have set folks wondering, and one cannot be too careful when
lives are at stake."
"I have no doubt you are right. In any case it is too late to tell
her now," she said quietly.
There was in this new atmosphere a sense at once of relief and
restraint. With Anna Vassilievna's puzzled eye no longer on them,
they were able to be themselves again, without necessity for guarding
every word and look. And this in itself was a mighty relief, for
false pretence is mother to awkwardness, and the natural man is the
honest one, the man who is just himself and claims no more.
And now, too, they could discuss their affairs in a way that was not
possible before, and therein also lay elements of enlightenment.
But, even in this new freedom, there was also a novel sense of
restraint, in the ever present knowledge that they two, of all people
in the world, were alone together in surely as strange and anomalous
a companionship as the world had ever seen.
And these mingled feelings again made at once for speech and for
silence, and so their talk was intermittent and discursive.
Pavlof, when he spoke to her, kept his eyes rigidly on the glowing
embers, lest she should see in them that which would not be
suppressed, but which he still would not have her see. And how
should he, untutored man, know that she saw it all in the very
stiffness of his manner, that it cried aloud to her in every tone of
his voice whenever he pronounced her name.
For to woman has been given a sense denied as a rule to man. She
knows by instinct when a man loves her. And Hope Palma knew that
this man loved her still, in spite of himself, as much as he had ever
loved her, and that was with every fibre of his being.
And so, when her eyes rested on him, she already found a difference
in him since Anna Vassilievna left them. For eyes, after all, are
but windows, and the soul that looks out of them colours all it sees
with somewhat of itself.
And yet, again, perhaps, after all, there was in him a subtle and
almost indefinable change bred of these new circumstances--the
unintentional outward manifestation of these mixed feelings of
freedom and restraint. He was at once stiffer and gentler than when
Anna was there. For then he had to assume a warmth of demeanour
befitting their supposed relationship, and to both of them it was
merely an assumption and meant nothing. And now that no assumption
was necessary, though all the warmth was in him still, his fear lest
his real feelings should show through stiffened his manner and made
it seem unduly cold and formal.
Many were the nights they sat so, during the first weeks of their
release from Madame Roskova's kindly supervision, discussing at
times, and from every point of view, Serge's chances of escape and
the prospects of their hearing of it, but as often sitting in the
silence of their long, long thoughts.
"You really think Serge would be able to get clear away, Paul
Ivanuitch?" she would ask.
"From all we could learn there was no great difficulty, Hope
Ivanovna. It is not like Kara, you see. Will you pardon me reminding
you again that here I am Serge Petrovitch----"
"Oh, I am sorry. I cannot get used to it."
"It is only that I fear if you call me Paul Ivanuitch in private it
may slip out at other times and lead to trouble."
"I will remember. You see, I have always thought of you as Paul
Ivanuitch, and it is not easy to begin thinking of you as Serge
Petrovitch."
"I know, and I am sorry for the necessity. If it were not of
importance I would not ask it."
"And when do you think is the soonest we could hear from him?"
"He would get away in the early spring. It might take him some
months to get back to Russia. He would strike up north, which would
make it longer but safer. Then he would seek you first. Where would
he learn that you had come out after him?"
"Old Masha would tell him that, if he found her."
"He would seek her at once when he could not find you. Where would
she be?"
"I had to send her back to her people in Old Khersonese. They had
been very good to me when I was ill--when my baby was born."
"Ah--God, yes!"--with a face full of sympathy--"I did not dare to ask
you, Hope Ivanovna. Serge told me. What--did it----?"
"He died. And I was glad. Such a dear little fellow! But when he
was dead I knew it was best so."
"It was very sore upon you, Hope Ivanovna."
"It was hard to lose him, but I knew it was better for him, and so I
did not mourn for him, and in my heart I have him always."
It was only round the stove at night, however, that they had time for
disjointed conversation, or, as the case might be, for brooding
thought. Pavlof was working energetically with brain and hand to
stamp out the hidden germs of typhus from the prison kameras--as far
as that was possible without burning the whole place down. It was an
almost impossible task. Hercules himself would have given it up in
despair and applied the cleansing flame.
He talked hard and worked harder. But the Governor, absolute as were
his powers over his prisoners, would not authorise the expenditure of
a single rouble on sanitary matters without express permission from
headquarters. Roubles were none too plentiful and had to be
accounted for to the last kopeck. Men and women were sent there
because they were superfluous. As Zazarin tersely put it. "Lives
are cheap, but money is always dear. If we tell them a man is dead
that ends it, but roubles never die, and we have to account for them."
And Hope had the housework to attend to, and, since it was but a
small house, and she had much time and a natural instinct for
neatness and making the most of things, she brought and kept it up to
such a high plane of comfort that Paul Pavlof hardly knew himself in
it. Comfortable, in a way, it always had been under Madame Roskova's
rough-and-ready housekeeping, but Anna Vassilievna's time had always
been subject to many outside calls from the sick and needy ones,
which had not yet fallen upon the newcomer, and--well, Hope's ideas
of comfort went further than Anna Vassilievna's.
Pavlof was so full of his Augean labours that he must discuss them
with her of a night, and Hope rejoiced in the new element as a relief
from the tension of those long brooding silences, which at times
became beyond endurance painful.
Then Madame Roskova began to bring in her friends, who had been
waiting impatiently to make Madame Palma's acquaintance, and once
they began coming the little house was rarely free of them. For,
since the privilege of visiting among themselves was about the only
privilege the Free Command possessed, they availed themselves of it
to the full.
Their lives were hard and meagre, but in many cases their capacities
for enthusiasm, and even their enthusiasms, had survived their
sufferings. How they managed to live on the trifling allowance made
by the paternal Government they would have found it difficult to
explain. Their condition, indeed, was almost analogous to that of
the proverbial villagers who wrung a livelihood out of one another's
washing. Anna Roskova, for instance, earned scanty kopecks by
mending and stitching for the officers of the guard. Then there were
occasional trifling remittances from friends at home, some of which
reached them and some of which did not. But all helped one another,
and among them they fought the wolf from the door.
They were most of them men and women of education and utterly unused
to manual labour, save such as the mines had painfully taught them.
And, since there was no opening for the professions, even if they had
been allowed to follow them, they just grubbed along from hand to
mouth as best they could and stubbornly refused to starve. They ate
little and thought and talked much.
Paul Pavlof--whom they knew only as Serge Palma--was better
circumstanced than most, by reason of his quasi-official duties. But
his own wants were of the smallest, and his hand and house and slim
purse had always been open to all who needed help.
Naturally, that house became the life-centre of the community and had
rarely been without visitors of an evening, until the arrival of that
least expected of all visitors turned the world upside down for some
of them.
While Hope lay in the little inner room, desiring nothing but quiet,
Anna Roskova had rigidly forbidden visitors the house, and the
cheerfulness of the community suffered eclipse. Now that the shadow
had passed they returned with doubled enjoyment, and Hope need never
lack company.
They rejoiced in her courage in compassing that wearisome journey,
and one and all made much of her. They brought her books and papers,
such as they had, and were ready to sit and talk by the hour of
Russia and their nipped hopes and blighted endeavours.
When the distasteful day was over they came quietly in, one by one,
and, over the steaming samovar of coarse brick tea, lived their lives
again, and even ventured at times to entertain hopes of the future.
Their eulogies of "Serge Petrovitch," his courage, his self-denial,
his sympathetic care of both hale and sick, knew no end. They rang
the changes on his high qualities of heart and mind, till--when she
remembered that the Serge Petrovitch of these encomiums was not her
Serge Petrovitch--she sometimes tired of hearing them. And again, at
times, as the praises of this Serge Petrovitch were ringing in her
ears, they would attach themselves by some strange perversion of the
senses to that other Serge, and she would think more tenderly of him
than ever.
And then when, one by one, the rest had crept quietly away to their
comfortless little homes, envious somewhat, perhaps, of the happiness
of Palma and his beautiful wife, they two would sit brooding over the
handful of ashes in the stove, thinking out their own thoughts, their
elbows almost touching, but between them a great fixed gulf.
"Is he alive or is he dead?" Hope would ask herself. "Is he in outer
exile or pining in prison? Or has he won through to freedom, and is
he spending himself and risking himself trying to find out what has
become of me? Shall we ever learn what has become of him? How long
shall I wait here? Where can I go if I leave?"
And all her questions remained perpetual questions and there was no
answer to any of them.
And Pavlof, at her elbow, gazed steadily into the little core of rosy
life among the grey ashes, and asked himself--
"Is he alive or dead? Shall we ever get word from him? And if we do
not, what is to become of Hope Ivanovna? She will not be content to
remain here. And yet--and yet----"
He wished her nothing but good. To compass her happiness he would
willingly lay down his life, as he had done once already in taking
Serge's place at the mines. He wished Serge nothing but good. He
had proved it. And yet--and yet----
If Serge was dead--if the fiction of their lives could blossom into
fact! Ah, the glory and the joy of it! The heaven of Kara! He
would ask no better than to live there and die there, so she were
there too.
How was it possible to restrain such thoughts with that quiet figure
at his elbow, with the sweet, clear-cut face, and the great brooding
eyes?
But when at last she rose and he quietly bade her good-night, though
his voice told nothing of what was in him and the shadows veiled his
eyes and face, she read him like a book, and held him in honour
because of the strong, true heart that was in him.
And when she was gone he unrolled his mattress and stretched himself
on it before the stove, and dreamed of heaven on earth in a Kara hut,
such as none but he would have rejoiced in--unless he were blessed
with the love of a Hope Ivanovna.