The only window in Jeff’s cell was but a small, barred aperture higher
than his head, and only a glimmer of the dying day came into it. Its
walls and floor were of stone, and by straining into the dusk, Jeff
could see the one article of furnishing that the cell contained: a
wooden cot on which lay two fur robes. It was evident, then, that here
was a perfect refuge for one who wished to give himself to meditation.
There was little to distract the mind. The gloom itself was restful,
provided one did not strain to penetrate it, an annoyance easily avoided
by the simple expedient of closing one’s eyes. It tended toward perfect
concentration on the part of the thinker. The four walls offered no
great diversion, and indeed were so empty and cold and gray that they
suggested man’s only possible image of infinity; and this, like a rare
drug, dulled certain areas of the mind to the excitation of certain
others. It was as if Jeff were alone in an otherwise-empty universe,
with an infinity of space forever about him: a place of poetic
retribution for men who know no better than to think. Here, as in Jeff’s
cell, they could think eternally in peace. The one piece of furniture in
the room was not ornate enough to hold his fancy for very long, and he
had firm scruples against devoting too much attention to the fur robes
which covered it. They might succeed in distracting him from anything he
should set his mind to.
His arms were still chained; and perhaps this fact aided him to
concentrate. As he could only move them a few inches apart there was
nothing he could do with them to divert his attention from his one
simple theme, which now held him like an iron chain itself.
This theme concerned a certain abstract thing that he had heard of all
his life, but which he had never given a moment’s sober thought. The
name of that thing was Liberty—a name he had heard so many times it
actually had begun to lack meaning for him. Now he thought of it, he
could not remember that he had ever known its real meaning.
He had heard it said, times beyond counting, that he and his friends had
fought for the liberty of the South. He knew that part of the ardor that
sent the Union arms into the field was a desire to liberate the slaves.
In addition to this, he had fought because the National Government
threatened institutions which he loved and believed in; and his foes had
fought to uphold a union in which he had lost faith. There was, indeed,
a great deal of talk about liberty lately; and all the time he had not
known what it meant.
He had been taught to believe, before ever the Civil War shook the land,
that America was the “Land of Liberty,” and when he had come to hate the
institution of America, he had someway lost faith in the liberty which
was its watch cry. He had thought it an empty name. He had secretly
concluded that it didn’t matter; at least his attitude tended to show
that conclusion. When some of his comrades-at-arms had tried once more
to reconcile themselves to the United States Government—believing that
it had qualities worth their loyalty, since it had been decreed they
could not have a government of their own, exactly as they wanted it—he
had decided to vacate America for good. There had been nothing here
worth holding him. He had concluded that the Republican idea—which is
only another way of saying the Liberty idea—was not worth retaining. In
other words, this thing they called Liberty was not worth staying for.
No wonder, as he sat on the floor in the darkness, his arms confined,
that his mind was so busy he was almost unaware of the passing of time.
Jeff Sharp felt that perhaps it would have been better to have done this
thinking quite a long time before.
Before he had half exhausted the topic, there came an interruption; and
at first he was inclined to resent it. It turned out, however, that the
ensuing talk threw even further light on this subject which now had
become so interesting to him. He had a visitor in the person of the
nobleman Staritsa, and the latter, admitted by the lone guard who stayed
in quarters just outside the building, came and talked to him through
the barred cell door.
In the end Jeff was actually grateful for the conversation, although he
was inclined to doubt if it were aimed to please.
“You look very pretty in there,” Staritsa told him, frankly
complimentary. Staritsa had been imbibing freely of the Russian national
drink, doubtless to drown his sorrow for his friend’s injury, and now a
pleasant recklessness was upon him. Dusky though the corridor was, his
eyes glowed, and sometimes his white teeth caught the light. “Why do you
hold your hands in such a fond way? Have you forgotten the Christian
teaching, ‘Let not thy right hand know what thy left hand doeth?’ Here
you sit with them within an inch or so of each other. I fear, Mr. Sharp,
that position might prove awkward if you tried to duplicate this
morning’s feat. You were most clever—to spike Baron Karl’s guns.”
Jeff looked up, but no anger was in his eyes, and he was merely
interested in what Staritsa would tell him next. He felt that he would
like to draw further confidences from the young noble. “They are
somewhat awkward this way, I fear,” he observed carelessly, “yet I think
I could pick up a dog—not an honest dog, but a cur, a fawning,
treacherous wolf whelp—such a dog I could pick up by the scruff of the
neck and beat out his brains against these bars. If you care to ask the
jailer to let you in—”
Staritsa tried to laugh; but it is part of the curse that lies upon such
men that laughter is forbidden. He could only make mirthless sounds,
mostly in profane Russian—a tongue that lends itself to the most
unspeakable profanity. “_That_ will be added to the rest that we owe
you,” Staritsa said, when he could think again in English. “You were
clever to change the guns, Sharp, but I don’t think you will be
successful in changing the whips. We have had one kind for many
centuries, and although we love to comply with a great American’s wish,
I fear we will be unable to change it for any other. You will get to
know all its fine points—over there.”
He jerked his hand toward the west.
“Over there, of course,” Jeff agreed, smiling. “If I am sent
there—there will only be more dogs to kill when the final settlement is
made.”
“My friend, no one will ever know where you are.” Staritsa’s tone was
serious now; evidently the system he was about to describe moved him to
the most fervent admiration. “Perhaps you noticed—to-day—the _Neva
II_, lying in the harbor. Perhaps you did not know she is sailing
to-night, out west. She will have aboard her certain exiles for the
prisons—out there where the sun sets—or rather where it never rises.
Certain native thieves, a murderer or two—and perhaps a few others.
“The warrant arresting you to-day said that you were to have a trial;
Baron Karl never made a better joke. Injured though he is, he ordered
that warrant. Little brother, you have already had your trial. You have
already been sentenced. All that remains now—is to give you your
number.”
“So I am to sail to-night, am I?” Jeff asked. His voice trembled ever so
slightly, and Staritsa rejoiced to listen.
“All track of you will be lost. When you lie buried, you will also wear
a number—but that time will not be soon. Oh, not at all soon. There
will be years and years. The life out there is very healthy, so they
tell me.
“Soon the American Government will start inquiries as to what has
happened to the Special Correspondent. They will write to the Czar, and
the Czar will not know. Believe me, I am telling the truth; the Czar
will not know. There are many things that he does not know. He will be
greatly disturbed, but he will not find you. He can not disbelieve the
account that will be sent out, and your President will not disbelieve it
either. Oh, such a regrettable incident: that Jeff Sharp, summoned
before the commissioner for a talk concerning a duel in which he became
engaged, disappeared into the forest, evidently afraid for his life, and
can not be found! Oh, it will be a great shame—try hard as we could, he
could not be found. Of course no one will think of looking Out There. If
they did look, after certain years, they would never recognize the grand
American diplomat. Why, he was tall, beautiful, and proud. That thing?
That shrieking, stooped creature, licking the boots of the guard? That
broken, detested thing? Why, that is not a man at all!”
Staritsa shook with glee in the corridor. Jeff had never seen such spite
as this with which the noble Muscovite described his victim’s fate.
Evidently his love for Baron Karl had been an emotion of great power.
Besides, the evil jinni that lives in the vodka jar had hold of him and
put ideas in his head.
There was no hope, however, that the plan Staritsa had described was but
a drunken phantasy. Jeff knew that the _Neva II_ was lying in the
harbor, and he knew that she sailed to-night. He was a disillusioned
man, at last; and he had abjured false hope for good and all. To-night
he was going west.
When the _Neva II_ passed the harbor mouth he might say farewell to
American shores—except perhaps dim glimpses from shipboard of the bleak
peninsula, like the Siberian shore itself—because he would not come
again. Such prisoners as he would be do not return to make trouble. His
plan to migrate from America was to be executed.
He would get his wish, after all. He would become the subject of a
monarch, rather than one of a governing people. He would spend the rest
of his days in a country ruled by a privileged aristocracy, just the
sort of a _régime_ he had favored. Fate has queer ways of making one’s
dreams come true.
He had renounced America, and some power which lived behind the clouds
had taken him at his word. In the long years to come he would have
chances in plenty to observe the virtues of an aristocracy over a
republic. He would have unparallelled opportunities to observe its fine
points, and to admire its system.
In America he had been one of the commonwealth, but he had wished to
give over his rights as a citizen to become a vassal of a monarch. He
would now get his wish, and it was part of his requital that in
surrendering up his title as a freeman, he would also surrender his
title as an individual, his name. He would be known by a number from
henceforth. But likely he would soon forget his name, anyway. Such a
life as would be his in a Siberian prison camp works amazing changes in
a man, and particularly it devastates the association areas of the
brain. This was apart from the fact that he would be one of an ant hill,
in a land whose empty spaces were in themselves enough to despoil a man
of his own identity.
Jeff Sharp had drained his cup to its bitter dregs. Now, as if his cup
were poison, the stream of his life seemed to have ceased to flow. So
silent he stood, seemingly so bereft of all motion that he suggested a
wild thing crouching terrified in a woodland covert, who by remaining
motionless hopes to escape the searching eyes of a beast of prey; but
the cruel beast that hunted Jeff to-night was his own thoughts. He was
alone, at last; wholly and terribly alone.
There was no one to go to now. Iron bars stood between. There was no one
who could come to him. He had danced, but now the music was still and
his companions had gone away, and he was left alone in the silence and
the darkness. As far as Jeff dared to dream his game of life had been
played—and lost.
If his punishment stopped at this instant, Jeff Sharp had paid in full
for all his vanity and folly; yet it had hardly begun. Those who hated
him and who wanted to see him fall now had their wish. Here, in the
darkness, out of the sight of all men, his proud head was bowed.
He was alone in fact as well as in the lonely sea of his mood; Staritsa
had reeled through the corridor and away into the twilight. The dusk
deepened, and the black Alaskan night obliterated the last ray that
wandered through the window of his cell. Still Jeff stood in one place,
and the wheel of his thought was far and wide as the orbit of a star;
but the shadows that lay over him were black and chill with never a
starry gleam.