"You had better let me take you home," said Schmidt, kindly, after the
total failure of the last effort.
Vjera seemed to be stupefied by the sense of disappointment. She went back
to the door of the tobacconist's house and put out her hand as though to
ring the bell again then, realising how useless the attempt would be, she
let her arms fall by her sides and leaned against the door-post, her
muffled head bent forward and her whole attitude expressing her despair.
"Come, come, Vjera," said the Cossack in an encouraging tone, "it is not
so bad after all. By this time the Count is fast asleep and is dreaming of
his fortune, you know, so that it would be a cruelty to wake him up. In
the morning we will all go with Fischelowitz and have him let out, and he
will be none the worse."
"I am afraid he will be--very much the worse," said Vjera. "It is
Wednesday to-morrow, and if he wakes up there--oh, I do not dare think of
it. It will make him quite, quite mad. Can we do nothing more? Nothing?"
"I think we have done our best to wake up this quarter of the town, and
yet Fischelowitz is still asleep. No one else can be of any use to
us--therefore--" he stopped, for his conclusion seemed self-evident.
"I suppose so," said Vjera, regretfully. "Let us go, then."
She turned and with her noiseless step began to walk slowly away, Schmidt
keeping close by her side. For some minutes neither spoke. The streets
were deserted, dry and still.
"Do you think there is any truth at the bottom of the Count's story?"
asked the Cossack at last.
"I do not know," Vjera answered, shaking her head. "I do not know what to
think," she continued after a little pause. "He tells us all the same
thing, he speaks of his letters, but he never shows them to anyone. I am
afraid--" she sighed and stopped speaking.
"I will tell you this much," said her companion. "That man is honest to
the backbone, honest as the good daylight on the hills, where there are no
houses to darken it and make shadows."
"He is an angel of goodness and kindness," said Vjera softly.
"I know he is. Is he not always helping others when he is starving
himself? Now what I say is this. No man who is as good and as honest as he
is, can have become so mad about a mere piece of fancy--about an invented
lie, to be plain. What there is in his story I do not know, but I am sure
that there was truth in it once. It may have been a long time ago, but
there was a time once, when he had some reason to expect the money and the
titles he talks of every Tuesday evening."
"Do you really think that?" asked Vjera, eagerly. Her own understanding
had never gone so far in its deduction.
"I am sure of it. I know nothing about mad people, but I am sure that no
honest man ever invented a story out of nothing and then became crazy
because it did not turn out true."
"But you, who have travelled so much, Herr Schmidt, have you ever heard
the name before--have you ever heard of such a family?"
"I have a bad memory for names, but I believe I have. I cannot be sure. It
makes no difference. It is a good Russian name, in any case, and a
gentleman's name, I should think. Of course I only mean that I--that you
should not think that because I--in fact," blundered out the good man,
"you must not suppose that you will be a real countess, you know."
"I?" exclaimed Vjera, with a nervous, hysterical laugh, which the Cossack
supposed to be genuine.
"That is all I wanted to say," he continued in a tone of relief, as though
he felt that he had done his duty in warning the poor girl of a possible
disappointment. "It may be true--of course, and I am sure that it once
was, or something like it, but I do not believe he has any chance of
getting his own after so long."
"I cannot think of it--in either way. If it is all an old forgotten tale
which he believes in still-why then, he is mad. Is it not dreadful to see?
So quiet and sensible all the week, and then, on Tuesday night, his
farewell speech to us all--every Tuesday--and his disappointment the next
day, and then a new week begun without any recollection of it all! It is
breaking my heart, Herr Schmidt!"
"Indeed, poor Vjera, you look as though it were."
"And yet, and yet--I do not know. I think that if it were one day to turn
out true--then my heart would be quite broken, for he would go away, and I
should never see him again."
Accustomed as she was to daily association with the man who was walking by
her side, knowing his good heart and feeling his sympathy, it is small
wonder that the lonely girl should have felt impelled to unburden her soul
of some of its bitterness. If her life had gone on as usual, undisturbed
by anything from without, the confessions which now fell from her lips so
easily would never have found words. But she had been unsettled by what
had happened in the early evening, and unstrung by her great anxiety for
the Count's safety. Her own words sounded in her ear before she knew that
she was going to speak them.
"I am sure that something dreadful is going to happen," she continued
after a moment's pause. "He will go mad in that horrible prison, raving
mad, so that they will have to--to hold him--" she sobbed and then
recovered herself by an effort. "Or else--he will fall ill and die, after
it--" Here she broke down completely and stopping in the middle of the
street began crying bitterly, clutching at Schmidt's arm as though to keep
from falling.
"I should not wonder," he said, but she fortunately did not catch the
words.
He was very sorry for the poor girl, and felt inclined to take her in his
arms and carry her to her home, for he saw that she was weak and exhausted
as well as overcome by her anxiety. Before resorting to such a measure,
however, he thought it best to try to encourage her to walk on.
"Nothing that one expects, ever happens," he said confidently, and passing
his arm through hers, as though to lead her away. "Come, you will be at
home presently and then you will go to bed and in the morning, before you
are at the shop, everything will have been set right, and I daresay the
Count will be there before you, and looking as well as ever."
"How can you say that, when you know that he never comes on Wednesdays!"
exclaimed Vjera through her tears. "I am sure something dreadful will
happen to him. No, not that way--not that way!"
Schmidt was trying to guide her round a sharp corner, but she resisted
him.
"But that is the way home," protested the Cossack.
"I know, but I cannot go home, until I have seen where he is. I must
go--you must not prevent me!"
"To the police-station?" inquired Schmidt in considerable astonishment.
"They will not let us go in, you know. You cannot possibly see him. What
good can it do you to go and look at the place?"
"You do not understand, Herr Schmidt! You are good and kind, but you do
not understand me. Pray, pray come with me, or let me go alone. I will go
alone, if you do not want to come. I am not at all afraid--but I must go."
"Well, child," answered Schmidt, good-humouredly. "I will go with you,
since you are so determined."
"Is this the way? Are you not misleading me? Oh, I am sure I shall never
see him again--quick, let us walk quickly, Herr Schmidt! Only think what
he may be suffering at this very moment!"
"I am sure he is asleep, my dear child. And when we are outside of the
police-station we cannot know what is going on inside, whether our friend
is asleep or awake, and it can do no good whatever to go. But since you
really wish it so much, we are going there as fast as we can, and I
promise to take you by the shortest way."
Her step grew more firm as they went on and he felt that there was more
life in the hand that rested on his arm. The prospect of seeing the walls
of the place in which the Count was unwillingly spending the night gave
Vjera fresh strength and courage. The way was long, as distances are
reckoned in Munich, and more than ten minutes elapsed before they reached
the building. A sentry was pacing the pavement under the glare of the
gaslight, his shadow lengthening, shortening, disappearing and lengthening
again on the stone-way as he walked slowly up and down. Vjera and her
companion stopped on the other side of the street. The sentinel paid no
attention to them.
"You are quite sure it is there?" asked the girl, under her breath.
Schmidt nodded instead of answering.
"Then I will pray that all may be well this night," she said.
She dropped the Cossack's arm and slipped away from him; then pausing at a
little distance, in the deep shadow of an archway opposite the station,
she knelt down upon the pavement, and taking some small object, which was
indistinguishable in the darkness, from the bosom of her frock she clasped
her hands together and looked upwards through the gloom at the black walls
of the great building. The Cossack looked at her in a sort of half-stupid,
half-awed surprise, scarcely understanding what she was doing at first,
and feeling his heart singularly touched when he realised that she was
praying out here in the street, kneeling on the common pavement of the
city, as though upon the marble floor of a church, and actually saying
prayers--he could hear low sounds of earnest tone escaping from her
lips--prayers for the man she loved, because he was shut up for the night
in the police-station like an ordinary disturber of the peace. He was
touched, for the action, in its simplicity of faith, set in vibration the
chords of a nature accustomed originally to simple things, simple hopes,
simple beliefs. Instinctively, as he watched her, Johann Schmidt raised
his hat from his round head for a moment, and if he had possessed any
nearer acquaintance with praying in general or with any prayer in
particular it is almost certain that his lips would have moved. As it was,
he felt sorry for Vjera, he hoped that the Count would be none the worse
for his adventure, and he took off his hat. Let it be counted to him for
righteousness.
As for poor Vjera herself, she was so much in earnest that she altogether
forgot where she was. For love, it has been found, is a great suggester of
prayer, if not of meditation, and when the beloved one is in danger a
little faith seems magnified to such dimensions as would certainly accept
unhesitatingly a whole mountain of dogmas. Vjera's ideas were indeed
confused, and she would have found it hard to define the result which she
so confidently expected. But if that result were to be in any proportion
to her earnestness of purpose and sincerity of heart, it could not take a
less imposing shape than a direct intervention of Providence, at the very
least; and as the poor Polish girl rose from her knees she would hardly
have been surprised to see the green-coated sentinel thrust aside by
legions of angelic beings, hastening to restore to her the only treasure
her humble life knew of, or dreamed of, or cared for.
But as the visions which her prayers had called before her faded away into
the night, she saw again the dingy walls of the hated building, the gilt
spike on the helmet of the policeman and the shining blade that caught the
light as he moved on his beat. For one moment Vjera stood quite still.
Then with a passionate gesture she stretched out both arms before her, as
though to draw out to herself, by sheer strength of longing, the man whose
life she felt to be her own--and at last, wearied and exhausted, but no
longer despairing altogether, she covered her face with her hands and
repeated again and again the two words which made up the burden of her
supplication.
"Save him, save him, save him!" she whispered to herself.
When she looked up, at last, Schmidt was by her side. There was something
oddly respectful in his attitude and manner as he stood there awaiting her
pleasure, ready to be guided by her whithersoever she pleased. It seemed
to him that on this evening he had begun to see Vjera in a new light, and
that she was by no means the poor, insignificant little shell-maker he had
always supposed her to be. It seemed to him that she was transformed into
a woman, and into a woman of strong affections and brave heart. And yet he
knew every outline of her plain face, and had known every change of her
expression for years, since she had first come to the shop, a mere girl
not yet thirteen years of age. Nor had it been from lack of observation
that he had misunderstood her, for like most men born and bred in the
wilderness, he watched faces and tried to read them. The change had taken
place in Vjera herself and it must be due, he thought, to her love for the
poor madman. He smiled to himself in the dark, scarcely understanding why.
It was strange to him perhaps that madness on the one side should bring
into life such a world of love on the other.
Vjera turned towards him and once more laid her hand upon his arm.
"Thank you," she said. "I could not have slept if I had not come here
first, and it was very good of you. I will go home, but do not come with
me--you must be tired."
"I am never tired," he answered, and they began to walk away in the
direction whence they had come.
For a long time neither spoke. At last Schmidt broke the silence.
"Vjera," he said, "I have been thinking about it all and I do not
understand it. What kind of love is it that makes you act as you do?"
Vjera stood still, for they were close to her door, and there was a street
lamp at hand so that she could see his face. She saw that he asked the
question earnestly.
"It is something that I cannot explain--it is something holy," she
answered.
Perhaps the forlorn little shell-maker had found the definition of true
love.
She let herself in with her key and Schmidt once more found himself alone
in the street. If he had followed his natural instinct he would have
loitered about in one of the public squares until morning, making up for
the loss of his night's rest by sleeping in the daytime. But he had taken
upon himself the responsibilities of marriage as they are regarded west of
the Dnieper, and his union had been blessed by the subsequent appearance
of a number of olive-branches. It was therefore necessary that he should
sleep at night in order to work by day, and he reluctantly turned his
footsteps towards home. As he walked, he thought of all that had happened
since five o'clock in the afternoon, and of all that he had learned in the
course of the night. Vjera's story interested him and touched him, and her
acts seemed to remind him of something which he nevertheless could not
quite remember. Far down in his toughened nature the strings of a
forgotten poetry vibrated softly as though they would make music if they
dared. Far back in the chain of memories, the memory once best loved was
almost awake once more, the link of once clasped hands was almost alive
again, the tender pressure of fingers now perhaps long dead was again
almost a reality able to thrill body and soul. And with all that, and with
the certainty that those things were gone for ever, arose the great
longing for one more breath of liberty, for one more ride over the
boundless steppe, for one more draught of the sour kvass, of the camp brew
of rye and malt.
The longing for such things, for one thing almost unattainable, is in man
and beast at certain times. In the distant northern plains, a hundred
miles from the sea, in the midst of the Laplander's village, a young
reindeer raises his broad muzzle to the north wind, and stares at the
limitless distance while a man may count a hundred. He grows restless from
that moment, but he is yet alone. The next day, a dozen of the herd look
up, from the cropping of the moss, snuffing the breeze. Then the Laps nod
to one another, and the camp grows daily more unquiet. At times, the whole
herd of young deer stand at gaze, as it were, breathing hard through wide
nostrils, then jostling each other and stamping the soft ground. They grow
unruly and it is hard to harness them in the light sledge. As the days
pass, the Laps watch them more and more closely, well knowing what will
happen sooner or later. And then at last, in the northern twilight, the
great herd begins to move. The impulse is simultaneous, irresistible,
their heads are all turned in one direction. They move slowly at first,
biting still, here and there, at the bunches of rich moss. Presently the
slow step becomes a trot, they crowd closely together while the Laps
hasten to gather up their last unpacked possessions, their cooking
utensils and their wooden gods. The great herd break together from a trot
to a gallop, from a gallop to a break-neck race, the distant thunder of
their united tread reaches the camp during a few minutes, and they are
gone to drink of the polar sea. The Laps follow after them, dragging
painfully their laden sledges in the broad track left by the thousands of
galloping beasts--a day's journey, and they are yet far from the sea, and
the trail is yet broad. On the second day it grows narrower, and there are
stains of blood to be seen; far on the distant plain before them their
sharp eyes distinguish in the direct line a dark, motionless object,
another and then another. The race has grown more desperate and more wild
as the stampede neared the sea. The weaker reindeer have been thrown down,
and trampled to death by their stronger fellows. A thousand sharp hoofs
have crushed and cut through hide and flesh and bone. Ever swifter and
more terrible in their motion, the ruthless herd has raced onward,
careless of the slain, careless of food, careless of any drink but the
sharp salt water ahead of them. And when at last the Laplanders reach the
shore their deer are once more quietly grazing, once more tame and docile,
once more ready to drag the sledge whithersoever they are guided. Once in
his life the reindeer must taste of the sea in one long, satisfying
draught, and if he is hindered he perishes. Neither man nor beast dare
stand between him and the ocean in the hundred miles of his arrow-like
path.
Something of this longing came upon the Cossack, as he suddenly remembered
the sour taste of the kvass, to the recollection of which he had been
somehow led by a train of thought which had begun with Vjera's love for
the Count, to end abruptly in a camp kettle. For the heart of man is much
the same everywhere, and there is nothing to show that the step from the
sublime to the ridiculous is any longer in the Don country than in any
other part of the world. But between poor Johann Schmidt and his draught
of kvass there lay obstacles not encountered by the reindeer in his race
for the Arctic Ocean. There was the wife, and there were the children, and
there was the vast distance, so vast that it might have discouraged even
the fleet-footed scourer of the northern snows. Johann Schmidt might long
for his kvass, and draw in his thin, wan lips at the thought of the taste
of it, and bend his black brows and close his sharp eyes as in a dream--it
was all of no use, there was no change in store for him. He had cast his
lot in the land of beer and sausages, and he must work out his salvation
and the support of his family without a ladleful of the old familiar brew
to satisfy his unreasonable caprices.
So, last of all those concerned in the events of the evening, Johann
Schmidt went home to bed and to rest. That power, at least, had remained
with him. Whenever he lay down he could close his eyes and be asleep, and
forget the troubles and the mean trifles of his thorny existence. In this
respect he had the advantage of the others.
Vjera lay down, indeed, but the attempt to sleep seemed more painful than
the accepted reality of waking. The night was the most terrible in her
remembrance, filled as it was with anxiety for the fate of the man she so
dearly loved. To her still childlike inexperience of the world, the
circumstances seemed as full of fear and danger as though the poor Count
had been put upon his trial for a murder or a robbery on an enormous
scale, instead of being merely detained because he could not give a
satisfactory account of a puppet which had been found in his possession.
In the poor girl's imagination arose visions of judges, awful personages
in funereal robes and huge Hack caps, with cruel lips and hard, steely
eyes, sitting in solemn state in a gloomy hall and dispensing death,
disgrace, or long terms of prison, at the very least, to all comers. For
her, the police-station was a dungeon, and she fancied the Count chained
to a dank and slimy wall in a painful position, chilled to the marrow by
the touch of the dripping stone, his teeth chattering, his face distorted
with suffering. Of course he was in a solitary cell, behind a heavy door,
braced with clamps and bolts and locks and studded with great dark iron
nails. Without, the grim policemen were doubtless pacing up and down with
drawn swords, listening with a murderous delight to the groans of their
victim as he writhed in his chains. In the eyes of the poor and the young,
the law is a very terrible thing, taking no account of persons, and very
little of the relative magnitude of men's misdeeds. The province of
justice, as Vjera conceived it, was to crush in its iron claws all who had
the misfortune to come within its reach. Vjera had never heard of Judge
Jeffreys nor of the Bloody Assizes, but the methods of procedure adopted
by that eminent destroyer of his kind would have seemed mild and humane
compared with what she supposed that all men, innocent or guilty, had to
expect after they had once fallen into the hands of the policeman. She was
not a German girl, taught in the common school to understand something of
the methods by which society governs itself. Her early childhood had been
spent in a Polish village, far within the Russian frontier, and though the
law in Russian Poland is not exactly the irresponsible and blood-thirsty
monster depicted by young gentlemen and old maids who traverse the country
in search of horrors, yet it must be admitted by the least prejudiced that
it sometimes moves in a mysterious way, calculated to rouse some
apprehension in the minds of those who are governed by it. And Vjera had
brought with her her childish impressions, and applied them in the present
case as descriptive of the Munich police-station. The whole subject was to
her so full of horror that she had not dared to ask Schmidt for the
details of the Count's situation. To her, a revolutionary caught in the
act of undermining the Tsar's bedroom, could not be in a worse case. She
would not have believed Schmidt, had he told her that the Count was
sitting in an attitude of calm thought upon the edge of a broad wooden
bench, his hands quite free from chains and gyves, and occupied in rolling
cigarettes at regular intervals of half an hour--and this, in a clean and
well-ventilated room, lighted by a ground glass lantern. She would have
supposed that Schmidt was inventing a description of such comfort and
comparative luxury in order to calm her fears, and she would have been ten
times more afraid than before.
It is small wonder that she could not sleep. The Count's arrest alone
would have sufficed to keep her in an agony of wakefulness, and there were
other matters, besides that, which tormented the poor girl's brain. She
had been long accustomed to his singular madness and to hearing from him
the assurance of his returning to wealth. At first, with perfect
simplicity, she had believed every word of the story he told with such
evident certainty of its truth, and she had reproached her older
companions, as far as she dared, for their incredulity. But at last she
had herself been convinced of his madness as through the weeks, and
months, and years, the state of expectation returned on Tuesday evenings,
to be followed by the disappointments of Wednesday and by the oblivion
which ensued on Thursday morning. Vjera, like the rest, had come to regard
the regularly recurring delusion as being wholly groundless, and not to be
taken into account, except inasmuch as it deprived them of the Count's
company on Wednesdays, for on that day he stayed at home, in his garret
room, waiting for the high personages who were to restore to him his
wealth. Sometimes, indeed, when he chanced to be very sure that they would
not come for him until evening, he would stroll through the town for an
hour, looking into the shop windows and making up his mind what he should
buy; and sometimes, on such occasions, he would visit the scene of his
late labours, as he called the tobacconist's shop on that day of the week,
and would exchange a few friendly words with his former companions. On
Thursday morning he invariably returned to his place without remark and
resumed his work, not seeming to understand any observations made about
his absence or strange conduct on the previous day.
So far the story he had told Vjera had always been the same. Now, however,
he had introduced a new incident in the tale, which filled poor Vjera with
dismay. He had never before spoken of his father and brother, except as
the causes of his disasters, explaining that the powerful influence of his
own friends, aided by the machinery of justice, had at last obliged them
to concede him a proportional part of the fortune. Fischelowitz was
accustomed to laugh at this statement, saying that if the Count were only
a younger son, the law would do nothing for him and that he must continue
to earn his livelihood as he could. In the course of a long time Vjera had
come to the conclusion, by comparing this remark with the Count's
statement when in his abnormal condition, that he was indeed the son of a
great noble who had turned him out of doors for some fancied misdeed, and
from whom he had in reality nothing to expect. Such was the girl's present
belief.
Now, however, he had suddenly declared that his father and his brother
were dead. With a woman's keenness she took alarm at this new development.
She really loved the poor man with all her heart. If this new addition to
his story were a mere invention, it was a sign that his madness was
growing upon him, and she had heard her companions discuss their comrade
often enough to know that, in their opinion, if he began to grow worse, he
would very soon be in the madhouse. It was bad enough to go through what
she suffered so often, to see the inward struggle expressed on his face,
whenever he chanced to be alone with her on a Tuesday afternoon, to hear
from his lips the same assurance of love, the same offer of marriage, and
to know that all would be forgotten and that his manner to her would
change again, by Thursday, to that of a uniform, considerate kindness. It
was bad enough, for the girl loved him and was sensitive. But it would be
worse--how much worse, she dared not think--to see him go mad before her
very eyes, to see him taken away at last from the midst of them all to the
huge brick house in the outskirts of the city beyond the Isar.
One more hypothesis remained. This time the story might turn out true. She
believed in his birth and in his misfortunes, and in the existence of his
father and his brother. They might indeed be dead, as he had told her, and
he would then, perhaps, be sole master in their stead--she did not know
how that would be, in Russia. But then, if it were all true, he must go
away--and her life would be over, with its loving hope and its hopeless
love.
It is small wonder that Vjera did not sleep that night.