Nevertheless, that night Anna Nicolayevna vainly courted sleep. Her heart was in her mouth. She wished she could implore her son to break the engagement, to sever connection with the movement, to abandon all his perilous and unconventional pursuits. But she knew that she would never have the courage to do so.
CHAPTER XXIII.
AN UNFORESEEN SUGGESTION.
Pavel"s prediction concerning Yossl came true, but the ident.i.ty 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 a.s.sistant 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 a.s.sistant 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 a.s.sistant 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 a.s.sistant 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 a.s.sure 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 "h.e.l.lo." "They know my name. I had some fun with them."
"It was all right, only for the sake of everything that is n.o.ble, 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 G.o.d"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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sionate 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 pa.s.s 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 a.s.sured 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."