CLARA BECOMES "ILLEGAL."
Late the next afternoon Mme. Shubeyko called at the warden's house with
a blue silk handkerchief round her face, apparently suffering from a
swollen cheek or toothache.
An hour or more later, while she and Rodkevich were absorbed in a game
of cards in the parlour and a solitary star shone out of the
semi-obscurity of a colorless sky, Makar, clean-shaven and clad as a
woman, with a blue handkerchief round his face, advanced toward the
gate. Clara stood in the doorway of the warden's office, watching the
scene. "Double Chin," the gateman, was still on duty, and as the
disguised prisoner approached him the impersonation struck her as
absurdly defective. Another second and all would be lost with a crash.
Her heart stood still. She shut her eyes with a sick feeling, but the
next instant she sprang forward, bonnetless, addressing Makar by Mme.
Shubeyko's name.
"You must not forget to let us know, dear," she said aloud, placing
herself between him and the gateman and shutting the disguised man from
view. "A swollen gum is a dangerous thing to neglect, you know. Yes,
figs and milk. I'll see you down the road, dear."
The heavy key groaned in the lock, the ponderous gate swung open and
Makar and Clara walked out into the twilight of the street--he with a
rush of joy, she in a turmoil of triumph and despair. It seemed as if he
had never vividly hoped to see liberty, and now, suddenly, he had found
himself breathing the very breath of it; while she who, a minute ago,
could have walked freely through the streets, was now the quarry of that
terrible force called government.
As soon as they reached the ditch, a short distance from the prison
building, Makar pulled off his feminine attire, threw it under the
little foot-bridge, and put on a government official's cap. Masha, the
gendarme officer's sister, was to await him round the corner; her house
was within easy reach from here, and Makar was to be taken there to
change his disguise and then to be driven to the Palace; but it had all
come about much sooner than they had expected, and she had not yet
arrived.
"Never mind. Hire a cab to Cucumber Market," Clara said. "There you can
cross some streets in the opposite direction and then take another cab
direct for Theatre Square. A very short walk will bring you to the
Palace. Don't forget the names: First Cucumber Market and then Theatre
Square," she repeated, coolly.
He nodded with a reassuring smile, shook her hand warmly, and they
parted.
* * * * *
Double Chin was soon to be relieved. Had he left his post before the
guards missed Makar, the connection existing between Mme. Shubeyko's
toothache and Makar's escape would never have been discovered, and Clara
would have come out uncompromised. But Clara was too slow in returning,
and the fat gateman was an impressionable, suspicious man, so he
presently made inquiry. He found that Mme. Shubeyko was still in the
warden's parlour, nursing her cheek with one hand and holding her cards
with the other.
In the commotion that followed the discovery Rodkevich wept hysterically
and beat the gateman, while Mme. Shubeyko went about invoking
imprecations upon the sly prisoner for stealing her new spring cloak,
bonnet and parasol.
Meanwhile Clara stood at a point of vantage, watching developments. Had
Double Chin left the building at the usual hour, without the prison
betraying any signs of disquiet, she would have returned to her room in
the warden's house at once, and thus saved her legal existence.
Otherwise she would have been forced to escape and join the army of the
"ne-legalny" (illegal), of political outlaws like the majority of
Pavel's intimate friends in St. Petersburg. About twenty minutes had
elapsed from the time she had parted from Makar, when she saw human
figures burst from the prison-gate, accompanied by the violent trill of
a police whistle. Her heart sank at the sound. From this minute on
Miroslav would be forbidden ground to her. A _ne-legalny_ is something
neither dead nor alive, the everlasting prey of gendarmes, policemen,
spies--of the Czar himself, it seemed; a "cut-off slice;" an outcast
without the right of being either an outcast or a member of the
community, a creature without name, home or identity. She was
appallingly forbidding to herself. But then in the underground world
_ne-legalny_ is a title of indescribable distinction, and at this moment
Clara seemed to feel in her own person the sanctity which she had been
wont to associate with the word.
By ridding herself of her starched collar and ribbon and hastily
rearranging her hair into a coarse, dishevelled knot she was
sufficiently transformed to look like a young woman of the masses to
strangers. She could not go to the Palace without a hat, however, and
buying one at this hour would have attracted undesirable attention. So
she first went to the house of Beile, her uneducated sister. Her
father's address or full name being unknown at the prison, it would be
some time before the police came to look for her at her sister's.
Beile was a little woman of thirty with glowing dark eyes and a great
capacity for tears and nagging. She resembled her parents neither in
looks nor in character, and her mother often wondered "whence she came
into the family." Her husband, a man learned in the Talmud, was absorbed
day and night in an effort to build up a small business in hides. As a
consequence, the space under Beile's bed was usually occupied with raw
skins and the two-room apartment which they shared with a tailor was
never free from odours of putrefaction.
Clara entered the room with a smile. The first thing she did was to kiss
and slap Ruchele, her sister's little girl, and to tickle her baby
brother under the chin.
"Why, where is your hat?" Beile screamed in amazement.
Her own hat was a matronly bonnet which she never wore except on
Saturdays, when she would put it on over her wig, tying its two long,
broad ribbons under her chin.
"It blew off into the river as I was crossing the bridge," Clara
replied. "That's what brings me here. I want you to get me a hat, Beile,
but you must do it quickly."
"Are you crazy? Whatever is the matter with you, Clara? Whoever heard of
a girl taking so little care of her hat that it should drop into the
water? You don't think you are a daughter of Rothschild, do you? Did you
ever!"
"That's all right, Beile. We'll talk it all over some other time. Every
minute is of great value to me."
Beile thought her sister was in a hurry to attend a lesson, so she
started. As she reached the door, with the baby in her arms, she
couldn't help facing about again.
"Didn't you go down the bank to look for it?" she asked.
"But I am telling you I have not a moment's time now."
The more irritation she betrayed, the more the other was tempted to nag
her.
"But somebody must have picked it up. It cost you five rubles and you've
not worn it ten times."
"Beile! Beile!" Clara groaned.
"Tell me where it is. I'll go and look for it myself. Maybe it is not
yet too late. Lord of the World, five rubles!"
Clara was left with Ruchele, but she changed her mind.
"I think I'll wait at Motl's house," she said, overtaking her sister,
with the child by her side. "It's nearer to my lesson."
Motl, the trunk-finisher employed by their mother, lived a considerable
distance from here. Beile gave her a look full of amazement and dawning
intelligence.
"At Motl's!" she whispered, sizing up Clara's dishevelled appearance.
"Where is your collar? A rend into my heart! What have you been doing to
yourself? Anyhow, go to Motl's. Or, no, go to Feige's. That's much
better. I'll bring you a hat in ten minutes." Feige was a poor old
relative of Beile's by marriage.
* * * * *
When Clara, in a large shepherdess hat and genteel looking, bade her
sister a hurried good-bye and made for the open gate, Ruchele ran after
her, yelling so that her mother had to catch her in her arms and carry
her gagged indoors. That was the only adventure Clara encountered on her
way to the Palace.
Makar was not there.
She told Pavel of the rescue in general outline, explaining that an
unexpected opportunity had presented itself and that there had been no
time for sending word to him. He flew into a rage. So far from being the
central figure in the affair for which he had been priming himself these
many weeks he had been left out of it altogether, left out like a ninny
caught napping. But this was no time for wounded pride. Clara had
unexpectedly become a _ne-legalny_ and--what was of more immediate
concern--what had become of Makar?
"I hope he was not taken in the street," he whispered.
"Masha might know. Could you send Onufri?"
Pavel disliked to use the old hussar for errands of this nature, but in
the present juncture there seemed to be no way out of it.
Onufri brought back a note in which the words were all but leaping with
excitement.
"No! No! No!" Masha wrote. "He has not been caught. My brother has not
yet been home. Everybody is nearly crazy! But I can almost see my
brother chuckling--in his heart of course! Hurrah! Hurrah! Long live the
revolution!"
"Thank God!" said Clara, shutting her eyes, in a daze of relief.
"He's a trump, after all. If they haven't caught him so far I don't see
why he should be caught now. He may come in at any moment. But where can
he be?"
The next morning, at about ten o'clock, when the countess heard the
doorbell she declared, with intense agitation, that something told her
it was the governor, and so it was. Clara went into her room.
"Don't leave me for a moment, Pasha," Anna Nicolayevna entreated her
son. "I am afraid to face him alone. I should be sure to put my foot in
it, if I did."
"Just leave uncle to me," said Pavel.
The old man looked wan and haggard, and was blinking harder than ever.
He began by joking Pasha on the rarity of his visits at the
gubernatorial mansion, but the young man cut him short.
"By the way, uncle, is it true that that fellow, the Nihilist, has
escaped?" he asked.
"How did it reach you so soon?" the governor asked. "The town must be
full of it."
"I heard it from a cab-driver last night. It's awful. But how did he get
out? Say what you will, they are a clever set, those Nihilists."
"Clever nothing! Our gendarmes are the most stupid lot on God's earth.
That's where the trouble comes in. There was a governess at the warden's
house. It was she who seems to have managed the whole affair. Of course,
the warden is a scoundrel, but what does he know of these things? It's
for the gendarme office to scent a bird of that variety, but then the
gendarme office is made up of rogues and blockheads. To clip one's
wings, that's all they are good for. Wherever one turns, he bumps his
head against the 'independent power' of the gendarmerie. It's a
government within a government, that's what it is. Else one would be
able to show St. Petersburg that Miroslav was not the kind of place for
Nihilists and all sorts of ragamuffins to play the mischief with. Those
swaggering gendarmes go around poking their noses everywhere, smelling
nothing but their own grand epaulets, and yet they are beyond the
control of civil authorities. The consequence is that when something
happens somebody else is held responsible, because the prisons,
forsooth, are under the Department of the Interior! To set an example of
idleness and stupidity is all they seem to be needed for, the gendarmes;
that's all, that's all."
Pavel agreed with him.
* * * * *
Another week passed. The police and the gendarmes were still searching
for Makar and the governess, as much in the dark as ever.
Yossl Parmet, Makar's father, was brought to Miroslav a prisoner, but he
was soon discharged. He was proud of his son. He now fully realised that
his Feivish belonged to a secret society made up of educated people who
preached economic equality and universal brotherhood as well as
political liberty, and that they were ready to go to prison for their
ideas. This made a strong appeal to his imagination and sympathies, and
the fact that his Feivish had outwitted the authorities and escaped from
prison inclined him to shouts of triumphant laughter. He searched the
Talmud for similar sentiments, and he found no stint of passages which
lent themselves to favourable interpretation. A new vista of thought and
feeling had opened itself to Yossl.