Pavel"s heart sank. It was apparently some political prisoner who had gone insane in a damp, cold, isolated cell.
"Dear friend, dear comrade!" he implored. "Can"t you try and remember your name?"
"Begone, or I"ll order your arrest, mean slave that you are!" This was followed by some incoherencies. Pavel went away from the wall with tears in his eyes.
In the afternoon of the third day he was striding to and fro, in excellent spirits. He had been in this mood since he opened his eyes that morning. Nothing but the most encouraging moments in the history of his connection with the movement would come to his mind to-day. He felt as though he and all his revolutionary friends were looking at each other, and conversing mentally, all as cheerful and happy as he was now.
Everything pointed toward the speedy triumph of their cause. He beheld barricades in the streets of St. Petersburg, Moscow, Odessa; he saw the red flag waving; he heard the Ma.r.s.eillaise. He recalled Makar"s vision of the time when victorious revolutionists would break into the fortress of Peter and Paul and take its prisoners out to celebrate the advent of liberty with the people. He thought of Clara, and his heart went out to her and to their interrupted honeymoon; he imagined her on his arm marching with others, he did not know whither, and whispering words of love and exultation to her, and once more his heart leaped with joy. He recalled jokes, comical situations. He felt like bursting into a roar of merriment, when there came a shower of taps on the wall.
"Who are you?"
"Boulatoff," Pavel answered, with sadness in his heart. He expected other absurdities from his insane neighbour. "And you?"
"Bieliayeff. I am not well. But I feel much better to-day. My lucid interval, perhaps. I remember everything."
Pavel had met him two years before. They talked of themselves, of their mutual friends, of the last news that had reached Bieliayeff through his other wall. It appeared that Bieliayeff"s neighbour on that side of his cell was Elkin.
Pavel received the information with a thrill of pleasure. He was going to ask Bieliayeff to convey a message to his fellow townsman; but at this he had an instinctive feeling that there was an eye at the peephole and he dropped his hand to his side, pretending to be absorbed in thought.
They resumed their conversation a quarter of an hour later.
"Tell Elkin I love him; he is dear to me," Pavel tapped out. "I feel guilty and miserable. If it were not for me he would be in America now.
Besides, I have been unjust to him. This oppresses me more than anything else."
These communications through the wall are the most precious things life has to offer in living graves like those of the fortress of Peter and Paul. The inmate of such a grave will listen to the messages of his neighbours with the most strenuous attention, with every faculty in his possession, with every fibre of his being; and he will convey every word of a long message as if reading it from a written memorandum.
After a lapse of five or ten minutes Bieliayeff came back with Elkin"s answer.
"He says he loves you," the tap-tap said, "and that it is he who ought to apologise. It was he who was unjust. As to his American scheme, he is happy to be here. It is sweet to be suffering for liberty, he says."
Makar was at the other end of the same corridor, and a message from him reached Pavel by way of a dozen walls.
"h.e.l.lo, old boy!" it said. "At last I have completed the revolutionary programme I have been so long engaged upon. It"s a dandy! It is not the same I spoke to you about in Moscow. It covers every point beautifully.
It would save the party from every mistake it has ever made or is liable to make."
One day Pavel learned that Clara had arrived in the fortress, after a long confinement and no end of examinations in Miroslav. She was in another part of the building and communicating with her was impossible.
Pavel scarcely ever thought of anything else. Could it be true that she was in the building and he would not even have a chance to see her? He was fidgeting and writhing like a bird in a cage.
At last, on a morning, the wall brought him a message from her. It had come through walls, floors and ceilings.
"Clanya sends her love," it ran, "and tells him to keep away from the damp walls as much as possible."
"Tell Clanya I think of her day and night," he rapped back.
Then a footstep sounded at his door, and with a heart swelling with emotion he threw himself upon his bed and buried his face in his hands.
THE END.