AN UNFORESEEN SUGGESTION.
Pavel's prediction concerning Yossl came true, but the identity of the
province to which the missing medical student belonged and the one in
which the unknown Nihilist had been arrested escaped the notice of the
secret service, and the Zorki gendarme officer contented himself with
appropriating the Paris letter. Chance, however, soon solved the riddle
for the authorities: a prisoner from Zorki, a drunkard charged with
petty larceny, recognised Makar in the prison yard.
It was Masha who brought the news to Pavel and Clara.
"The general of gendarmes was there, the assistant procureur, my brother
and the warden," she said, describing the scene when Parmet was first
addressed by his name in prison. "It was in the office. When he was
brought in, my brother says his heart--my brother's heart, I mean--began
to beat fast. The assistant procureur offered him a chair." She paused,
with an appealing smile, her hand to her bosom. "My heart, too, is
beating fearfully at this minute, as I picture the scene. I am too
imaginative, I am afraid. Well, he pulled up a chair, the assistant
procureur and said: 'Be seated, Monsieur Parmet.' The prisoner started a
little, just a little, don't you know, and then he smiled and began to
rub his eyes, as if he had just been awakened. The general got angry and
said now there was no use for him to make believe and to keep his mouth
shut and the assistant procureur said very politely he might as well
tell them a little more about himself and the people he knew in
Miroslav, as they were well known to the gendarmes anyhow. They coaxed
him and coaxed him and coaxed him until he shouted: 'As to myself I have
the honour of being a member of the Party of the Will of the People. As
to those I know in Miroslav, I assure you I don't know anybody here.'
But didn't he tease them! 'I hoped to form some connections here,' he
said, 'but then you were foolish enough to arrest me without giving me a
chance. The St. Petersburg gendarmes will laugh at you when they hear of
the kind of job you have made of it.'"
Pavel roared. He thought Makar's taunting answer would induce the local
gendarme office to detain him in the hope of discovering his prospective
"connections."
"Only why should he have said he was a member of the Party of the Will
of the People? That will aggravate his case," Clara said.
"That was the dream of his life--to say that, and to say it
triumphantly, to some gendarme officers. At any rate, we have no time to
lose."
That afternoon Pavel had a talk with Makar from the top of the hill
overlooking the prison yard.
"Hurrah!" Makar's handkerchief flashed back in answer to his first
"hello." "They know my name. I had some fun with them."
"It was all right, only for the sake of everything that is noble, don't
aggravate your case. Otherwise everything looks bright. Answer no more
of their questions."
"Crazy to wag my tongue. Have not spoken so long. I am trying to make a
convert of my guard. Pastime."
"Don't, for God's sake don't, or you'll ruin it all. Promise to keep
silent. Do you?"
"Don't get angry. I can see your handkerchief gnashing its teeth. Only
one thing more. May I?"
"Hurry up."
"Here, in prison I am openly a citizen of the Social Republic, and the
Czar is powerless to subdue me. I am in a cell. What more can he do with
me? But here, in this cell, where his power is most complete, I openly
defy him, all his gendarmes and army notwithstanding."
Pavel went away, cursing and laughing.
* * * * *
Every scheme of the conspirators turned out to be beset with
insurmountable difficulties. Clara did not tell Pavel all she knew and
made light of those obstacles with which he was acquainted, but in her
own heart she was extremely uneasy.
One evening Pavel sat on a bench in front of a public house, smoking a
cheap pipe. He had a loaded pistol in his pocket and a dagger under his
vest. The prison was a short distance round the third corner. When one
of the customers of the public house seated himself by his side Pavel
engaged him in conversation, talking garrulously in the manner of a
humble, careworn government clerk.
At last a way had been found for the provision man to take Makar out of
the prison yard. This was what kept Pavel in this out-of-the-way spot.
In the near vicinity of the inn stood a droshky. The appearance of the
provision waggon, full of empty sacks and some barrels, at a corner
diagonally across the street was to serve as a signal for Pavel to walk
up to a deserted ditch-bridge, where the runaway was expected to emerge
from under the sacks and to put on a military cap. Then Makar and
Boulatoff would gain the droshky, mount it, and be driven to the
Palace--the best hiding place one could find in all Miroslav.
Pavel was calm, determined, ready to shoot and to be shot at. By degrees
he grew fidgety. Presently Clara passed along. He rose to his feet and
went off in the opposite direction, the two meeting in the next street.
"It was a fizzle to-day, but it'll be all right, Pasha," she said in a
cheery, matter-of-fact voice. "As ill luck would have it, there were
some people about."
Pavel's brows contracted. "He'll try again, of course."
"Certainly. He will be there in four days."
"Four days! Couldn't he make it sooner?"
"I'll let you know."
"Wait, dearest. Are you sure the people in the prison are not getting
suspicious about you?" He had asked the question and she had answered it
more than once before.
"I don't think they are. Mme. Shubeyko and the Sparrow are the only ones
who know all about it. As to Rodkevitch, he understands it all, of
course, but he pretends not to. The Sparrow has his 'bosom friend' among
the keepers, but that man does not know anything about me. I am quite
sure of it."
"The fewer who know what you are doing there the better, of course.
Don't be foolhardy, my charming one. Oh, I do wish it was all over.
Mother wants you to go to the country with her, and I should join you
two for some time."
With a passionate handshake they parted, Clara directing her steps to
the prison building. The tremulous solicitude of his warning, his tender
concern for her safety left a glow of happiness and devotion in her. She
visioned him with his pistol and dagger and her heart was crushed with
anxiety. With his hot-blooded temerity he was apt to act rashly, to use
violence and stake his own life and Makar's before it was necessary.
Pavel's mode of taking away the prisoner had never appealed to her
strongly, and now the idea was growing on her of stealing a march on
Pavel, of bringing about Makar's liberation when her lover was not on
hand. And the more she thought of thus repaying his loving care for
herself the keener became her joy in the plan.
Still, the general situation looked so discouraging, that with all her
thrills of amorous delight, she was in a state of black despair. The
truth of the matter was that the provision man, who was eager to earn a
few hundred rubles and to be plucky, had proved to be a most unreliable,
boastful coward. Clara was cudgelling her brain for some new scheme, for
some new line of action, when an important suggestion came from an
unforeseen quarter. Mme. Shubeyko arrived at the prison, all in a
flutter with a discovery: Father Michail, the prison priest, bore
considerable resemblance to Makar.
"That's so, but what of it?" Clara said between irritation and agreeable
surprise.
"What of it! Why,--I have thought it all out, you may be sure of that.
It all occurred to me only an hour ago. Even less," she said with that
silly smile of hers which usually so annoyed Pavel and which at this
moment exasperated Clara even more than it would her quick-tempered
lover.
"What did occur to you?" Clara asked, with the least bit of venom on the
"did."
Mme. Shubeyko started to explain, but her listener divined the rest
herself: Makar might pass out in the disguise of a priest, while Father
Michail was with the prisoners.
"It's an excellent idea!" she murmured gravely. She could scarcely bring
herself to believe that the plan had emanated from an absurd brain like
that of the woman before her.
"Someone could detain Father Michail until it was all safely over," Mme.
Shubeyko went on. "He's awfully fond of card-playing, and if a pretty
young lady like yourself was his partner he would never have the heart
to get up from the table, I know he wouldn't."
The Sparrow, however, overruled the whole plan. Father Michail had been
connected with the prison for twenty years and the two gatemen knew him
as they did their own wives. What was more, the day gateman and the
priest were particularly fond of each other and often exchanged jokes.
Clara's hands dropped to her sides. Then she clenched a fist and said:
"Oh, nonsense. He'll never know. If Father Michail did not speak to him
he wouldn't think it strange, would he?"
"No, but the gateman might speak to him. Besides, you'll have to get up
early to fool him, lady." Every officer in the prison building had his
nickname, and this vigilant gateman who was a very fat man was known as
Double Chin. He seemed to be dozing half the time; but the Sparrow
assured Clara that when his little eyes were shut they saw even better
than when they were open.
"Nonsense. Your imagination carries you too far. Anyhow, nothing
venture, nothing have. We must get that man out."
"Ready to serve you, young lady, only if I may say so, I don't like the
plan at all, young lady."