Hearts in exile

CHAPTER XVI

HOW THEY SAT SIDE BY SIDE WITH A GULF BETWEEN

One day, as winter was drawing towards the spring, Pavlof received a customary order to inspect a convoy of newly-arrived prisoners.

Since the epidemic of the previous year the officials had exercised unusual precautions, more with a view, however, to their own safety than from any special care for the rest. These entailed no expenditure of money and little trouble for themselves. Each convoy as it arrived was carefully inspected, for life in the étapes was an inducement to disease. To one who had passed through those hotbeds of vice and infection himself, it seemed a miracle that any could possibly come through uncontaminated.

The authorities at St. Petersburg—busy just then with more important matters—had taken no slightest notice of the Governor's request for a successor to the late medical officer. So Pavlof, in the exercise of his duties, subjected every arrival, male and female, to careful examination, and promptly isolated every suspicious case. With a view to the utilisation of waste material, they were tended in hospital by female prisoners of some standing, under the distant but arbitrary oversight of Cossack sentries, whose natural density led them at times to interfere between nurses and patients when neither had dreamt for a moment of overstepping the most rigid disciplinary bounds. But they were, for the most part, dull-witted, low-browed, bullet-headed fellows, whose narrow understandings were capable of little beyond the fact that these were prisoners and they their warders. Coarse-grained by nature, their feelings had become pachyderm through constant contact with suffering humanity, and their highest aspirations might safely have been packed into a glass of vodka.

Many a strange meeting took place in that wretched hospital. In spite of the vigilance of the officials, it became a regular bureau of information concerning the happenings in the outside world.

The news, indeed, that trickled through was many months old, but it was of a very definite character, and concerned matters of very special interest which the rigid censorship would never have admitted in any other way. For the letters to the Free Command were subject to severest scrutiny and most abominable mutilation, and reached them occasionally, when they reached them at all, in fragments which taxed their ingenuity sorely at times to make head or tail of.

Among the abjects subjected to Pavlof's scrutiny that day was one whom he recognised, in spite of travel-wear and tangle, and a quick glance of surprise passed between them.

Mikhail Barenin had been one of the circle in Odessa to which Hope Arskaïa and himself, and later Serge Palma, had belonged. Paul promptly consigned him to hospital as a suspicious case, and presently visited him there.

"So you have come to join us, Mikhail Mikhailovitch?" he whispered, as he laid a professional hand on his patient's wrist.

"And you, Paul Ivanuitch? How come you on the side of the oppressors?"

"Force of circumstances. The doctor died of typhus. They were scared out of their lives, so they let me take his place till a new one comes. It enables me to serve my friends at times. But listen, Mikhail Mikhailovitch, and do not forget! I changed names on the road with Serge Palma, and here I am known by his name."

"I will remember. You may wear it without fear of disturbance."

"How? You have news? Tell me quick," and his heart was in his throat at thought of what this might possibly mean for him—and to Hope.

"Serge Petrovitch—Palma—is dead. He was shot in an attempt to escape."

Pavlof's face burned red as his released heart sent the hot blood whirling on its way. He ground his teeth to keep his face from twisting. He closed his eyes for a moment lest the light in them should blaze his secret abroad.

"You are sure of this, Mikhail Mikhailovitch?" he asked, when his thumping heart gave him leave to speak.

"Quite sure of the report. I was not there to see. But it was accepted as true before I left."

"We will speak of it again"—as the Cossack sentry sauntered towards them. "I can keep you here for some days. The rest will do you good. Remember, I am Serge Palma."

The other nodded and closed his eyes wearily. The comforts of a prison hospital were slight, but it was heaven compared with the pestiferous étapes and crowded kameras and the drudgery of the mines.

Paul Pavlof had enough to occupy his mind that day, and as he lay on his mattress before the stove at night his thoughts tossed him to and fro and gave him little rest.

Before morning he had decided that Mikhail Barenin must be told of Hope's presence there, and how it came about. For an unlikely, but still possible, chance encounter between them, even at a distance, might otherwise lead to trouble.

As to telling Hope of the report of Serge's death, he could not make up his mind.

He debated it with and against himself, and tried to look at it in every possible light.

If he could have been absolutely assured of its truth he would not have hesitated. But he could not be sure. It might be true. It might very likely be true. It was just as likely to be true as not. Nay, he said to himself at last, it was more likely to be true than not. And thereupon brought himself to with a round turn and took himself soberly to task.

For after all, looked at coldly, calmly, judicially—points of view only to be arrived at after severest condemnation of the self-confessed prisoner at the bar—it might not be true, and, above all thought of himself, was his thought for her, and—ay—of her. For, do what he would, now that the door of possibility, of probability—must he with shame confess it,—of hope, was unlatched by Mikhail Barenin's news, his thoughts refused the leash and ran freely. They leaped barriers, and climbed ladders whose end might rest in Kara snows, but whose summits touched rosy heavens. For a man may control his judgment, his words, his looks, but his thoughts have a will of their own and a way of their own, and when they take the bit it is time for him to pray that he may be delivered from evil.

He saw Barenin again next day, and under cover of a careful examination of his patient, while the sentry looked on suspiciously from a distance, he managed to tell him what he wished.

"Put out your tongue, Barenin," he said, "and listen to me before the watchdog barks. Hope Palma is here—keep your tongue out, man—she came expecting to find her husband, of course. We have been waiting news. I have not told her yet lest it should not be true. I am supposed to be Palma. She is supposed to be my wife. She lives in my house since it is not safe for a woman to live here alone. But she lives only in hope of word from Palma so that she may join him. Now you understand the situation."

"I understand." There was a twinkle in his eye as he added, "For your sake I hope the news is true."

"I wish only her happiness."

"We know that who know you. It was a surprise to us all when she married Palma. Every one thought——"

"Here comes the sentry. Your wrist—— So! You must remain here a day or two still. I will see you to-morrow."

At home he imposed so strict a guard upon himself, lest the tumult which Barenin's news had excited in him should escape in look or tone, that to Hope it seemed that he had suddenly become cold and distant as never before.

Time and restored health had made her almost her old self again, capable once more of calm, wide views of life, and less given to fits of bitter despondency, though these indeed still came upon her at times. Now, taking blame to herself for his coldness, she tried back in her mind for cause given, and failed to find it in spite of most rigorous searching.

She knew him too well to believe him capable of ill-feeling for her past offences; and had she not shown him by subsequent gracious meekness that her declensions came not of herself, but of her circumstances?

Finally, unaware of the fundamental upheaval wrought in him by Barenin's news, she said to herself that the complexities of their position were trying them both too hardly, and that the time had come for a change.

Yet where to go and what to do? Any move might be the wrong one and deprive her of the news for which she was waiting.

She could not, like Anna Roskova, find another lodging. For where should Serge Palma's wife live except with Serge Palma? And as to getting away, the risks and difficulties would be enormous. The nightmare horrors of the convoys and rest-houses still overwhelmed her at times, and, deep in heart, unacknowledged, not to be thought about, but still there, was a deep, comforting sense of peace and security in Pavlof's guardianship, and a very great disinclination to lose it. She was at her wits' end, and sorely troubled in her mind as to what course to pursue.

Paul had not dared to tell her of Barenin's presence at Kara. She would inevitably ask if he brought any news, and then he must disclose the whole matter.

Meanwhile he gripped his heart and treated her with the gravest courtesy. He provided for her comfort in every way within the compass of his power and the limited possibilities of Kara. But, by reason of the fire that was in him, he bore himself coldly perforce, hard as it was to do so, lest the slightest divergence from his narrow line should lead him astray into the open country of his heart's desire, and show her that which he was doing his best to keep from her.

And she? Trust her, she knew, somewhat at all events, of that which was in him, in spite of all his iciness and aloofness. And perhaps she feared somewhat for herself, and perhaps she feared somewhat for him. But always, except at those rarer and rarer intervals when her heart got twisted awry with the long strain of waiting, she thought of him warmly and gratefully.

Yet, now and again, after sitting in long silence before the stove of a night, the falseness and awkwardness of their position would spur her to speech, though the result was always the same. And—

"How much longer are we to go on in this way?" she would jerk out.

"What would you do, Hope Ivanovna?"

"Oh, I do not know, but I feel that I ought to be going."

"Where would you go?" At which she would shake her head hopelessly.

"I do not know, but I feel myself a burden to you."

"You know better, Hope Ivanovna," and he would strive to make that statement as colourless as possible.

"Shall we ever hear?" she would ask.

"God knows," and he thought of Barenin.

They never got much further than that, and she remained there, waiting, waiting, waiting, for the news which never came—a captivity of the spirit, harder to bear in some respects than the thraldom of the mines, though here, indeed, redeeming features were not entirely lacking.

But as time passed, and the absence of the promised word from Serge himself lent countenance to Barenin's news, Paul decided at last that she must be told.

He was quite aware that the anxiously expected letter might even then be lying in the hands of the officials as a suspect, might have been there for months, might never be delivered. Such things were by no means uncommon. Many a perfectly innocent letter, full of homely tidings into which morbid officialism read things undreamt of by the writer, was never delivered at all, and many a heart sickened and died of starvation in consequence.

He had a great fear, too, that this news of Barenin's, when she heard it, might bring about changes in their delicate relationship—changes which might not be for the better.

It seemed to him, indeed, at times that matters could hardly be more trying for them than they were, and yet—there was no knowing. This word of Barenin's might be like the dropping of an acid into a delicate solution, resulting in spicules and facets, in the instant formation of frosty points and angles where, before, all was colourless quiescence and limpid clearness. For, after all, Hope Ivanovna was a woman, and, little as he knew of women and their ways, he had seen enough of late to know that they are unaccountable at times and not to be understood of men.

She would regard him with different eyes. Would her glance be more kindly? Or would he find there, or imagine, new suspicions of himself and all his motives?

She would understand, in part at all events, the coldness and aloofness to which he had schooled himself so rigorously. Would she ascribe it to fear on his own account or on hers?

Would she after all understand that his coldness was meant in kindness—that if he had been over cold it had been through fear of being over kind?

For while Serge lived—if Serge lived—he stood between them as inviolable as a law of God. But if Serge were indeed dead, then there was no law, of God or man, that could keep them apart—if both their hearts so willed it.

No further news filtered through to them. Serge's promised letter never came; and at last he decided to tell her, and, having decided, still put off the telling from day to day in dread of the result.

Then one night, as they sat in silence before the stove, he said abruptly, "You remember Mikhail Barenin?"

"Surely," she said quickly, and gazed at him hungrily. It was a link with the past. It might mean news.

"He is here—in the prison."

"Ah?" she said with a quick swallow of her hopes and fears. "And he brings news?"

"He brings a rumour—but it may not be true."

His words prepared her for ill news. She eyed him anxiously.

"He says that when he left Odessa it was understood there that Serge had been shot in attempting to escape——"

"Ah!" she gasped. "And it was through you——"

Then her little round chin sunk on to her chest, and her bosom heaved convulsively.

"Yes," he began bitterly. "It was through me——" and stopped.

It was unjust, cruelly unjust. But he choked it down and sat in silence gazing into the ashes. Jangled heartstrings emit strange discords at times, even in a man, and he knew it. And this was a woman, and the woman he loved more than anything on earth.

All the same, as he sat there, life felt to him like a handful of grey ashes. All his hopes were trembling in the balance, but not by a word would he sway the balance either way.

"Give her time, give her time," he said to himself. "It is Hope Ivanovna. She will come to herself."

And she did. For the sobs died away at last, and presently she stretched a trembling hand round towards him, and said falteringly, "Forgive me, my friend—I was unjust.—You did it for the best——"

He took her hand very gently, and bent and kissed it, and she got up and went away to her closet.

The grey morning light showed how little she had slept. Her face was white and anxious, the circles round her eyes were darker than ever Her first words were—

"When did Mikhail Barenin come?"

"Three months ago."

"And you have known it all this time! Oh, why——"

"We do not know even yet that it is true, Hope Ivanovna."

"Does Mikhail believe it is true?"

"He said it was generally accepted as true," he said gravely, "but rumour often lies, and rumour from Siberia——"

"Why did you not tell me before?"

"I did not wish to distress you——"

"Why did you tell me now?"

"I thought much before I did so. I tried to view the matter from all points. I decided at last that it was right you should know. I could not but see the distress the long suspense is causing you."

"It is terrible," she said miserably. "It will kill me. This not knowing if he is alive is worse almost than knowing that he is dead."

"It leaves us hope."

"Hope dies of want," she said sadly.

"Hope must not die," he said. "When hope dies life is not worth living."

It was bravely said, for he could not but know that, if that other hope did finally die through lapse of time, then there might be hope—ay, and Hope for him.

CHAPTER XVII

HOW PAUL FOUGHT THE TERROR AND MADE A FRIEND

As Kara slipped slowly out of its winter fetters, and the skies brightened and the earth softened to the spring, typhus began at once to make head again in the crowded prison.

With the very inadequate means at his disposal Pavlof fought it, day and night and life by life; but in spite of his most strenuous efforts the fever spread like a prairie fire. The conditions were perfect. The harvest was ripe. Last year's sparks still smouldered in the pallid forms of the grey-coated prisoners and needed little to fan them into flame.

What one man could do almost single-handed, that Paul did. But he was like a lone man on the prairie beating wildly at the flames with his coat. He flung himself body and soul into the fight, without thought of himself, without undue thought even of Hope, but not without thought for her.

He insisted on Anna Roskova returning to his house to keep her company while he was away, and he himself lived—not in the prison, for that meant almost certain death—but as near to it as he could, in the guard-house adjoining, where he could be at death's call at any and every moment of the day and night.

The scourge grew with the heat. That year, when the cuckoo cried, the desertions were on an unparalleled scale. The captives fled for dear life as well as for dear freedom. And the guards almost winked at their flight, for if they stopped it would only be to feed the fever and to divert the attention of the doctor from sufferers of more consequence.

Captain Sokolof, in charge of the political prisoners, had had a sore wrestle with the fever the previous year. Pavlof had foretold another certain outbreak in the spring, had advised him to apply for leave and go home, had warned him urgently of the danger of stopping.

Sokolof accepted the advice, the warning, the danger, but he did not go. Stopping might possibly mean risk to life. Going meant certain loss of pay and position. As a soldier and a poor man he took the risk for the sake of the position and the pay.

It was an essential part of the captain's duties to inspect the prison kameras at regular intervals. The atmosphere of the kameras was that of a newly-opened sewer. Nevertheless, since the regulations called for inspection, Captain Sokolof inspected them and met the fever again half way.

By midsummer half the Cossack guard was down, the rest went in mortal fear, and Pavlof's star stood high. They looked to him as their only possible saviour, and followed his instructions implicitly.

Harsh, hard, ignorant peasants most of them, with little feeling and less intelligence, this insidious, creeping death struck panic into them. It is doubtful what they would have stopped at doing if Paul had so ordered. But he wisely restricted his measures so as to offend as little as possible against their instincts of discipline, and they never dreamt of obstructing or thwarting him.

In spite of all warnings, Captain Sokolof kept on his feet to the very last moment, and was in and out of the kameras long after he should have been lying quietly in a tent on the hillside.

But the most obstinate and determined of men must knock under when typhus says the word, and there was no exemption for Sokolof.

The man's courage, which after all was perhaps quite as much dogged obstinacy, appealed strongly to Paul, and he determined to save him if salvation were in any way possible. He camped him out on the hills unknown to himself, and set Hope Palma and Anna Roskova to nurse him through the crisis.

CHAPTER XVIII

HOW THE NEWS CAME THAT DREW THEM TOGETHER

Hope delayed makes the heart sick, but it does not kill. And the sick heart craves human sympathy as the storm-beaten flower craves the sun. And when the sun shines the flower turns towards it and is grateful.

As the weeks and months passed and brought no further news of Serge, Hope's expectation began to weaken, and at last to die.

"Surely," she said to herself, "if he were alive he would have managed to send the promised word to Paul in some way. Mikhail Barenin's news must be true."

Pavlof, in rigid honour, suggested the possibility of the word having been duly sent and having been arrested on the way.

Pressed to the wall by her questionings, however, he had to acknowledge that the prearranged message would have come in such a form that the most vindictive or hyper-sensitive censor could not possibly have read into it any but the most patently domestic intelligence.

Pressed still harder, he had to confess that, in spite of the hopes he so constantly impressed upon her, his own were growing weaker.

With a heavy heart he offered to do all in his power to further her wishes, whatever they might be, even to the point of helping her to leave Kara. But was forced, in discussion, to acknowledge it a useless risk and likely to lead to no result.

"You want to get rid of me," said she.

"I would count my life as nothing if it could help you," was his reply.

It may not be accounted very surprising that, under conditions so complex, Hope Palma's heart turned somewhat, and almost imperceptibly, towards this man into whose companionship she had been so strangely and so closely cast.

Her heart was sick. It had fed on hope till hope was bare as a bone and no longer afforded her starved soul any nourishment.

It was over two years since she saw her husband last. She was very human and she craved human sympathy. Where should she turn for it but to this man whose heart and hand were open to all, and who alone could enter fully into her griefs and perplexities?

His unselfish devotion and ceaseless thought for others, his clean heart and high bearing, these things were daily under her eyes, and they wrought upon her as the soft rain and sunshine on the flower.

That he loved her still as passionately as ever, she knew, in spite of all his cautiousness and frosty veilings. But she knew, too, that no word of love would ever pass his lips while the possibility of wrong to his friend might remain.

Is it strange that, as the blank months drew drearily past, her heart turned towards him? And did so with no more sense of unfaithfulness to her husband than a widowed heart may have, which aches for living love while yet not wholly forgetful of the dead.

By slow degrees hope sickened and died, and she came at last to believe in her heart that Mikhail Barenin's story must be true and that Serge was dead.

Pavlof, however, though he hungered body and soul for that still closer companionship with her which Circumstance, first handmaid of Providence, seemed to be doing her utmost to bring about, found strength and relief in the fierce fight in which he was engaged.

Hope, and his hopes concerning her, were never out of his thoughts, but the typhus kept him busy. Death no longer crept insidiously, but stalked boldly, and snatched his victims where he would, and Pavlof, beaten here and beaten there and losing everywhere, still faced him valiantly and would not leave the field.

It was about midsummer—when the fever was at its worst, and the kameras were like pest-houses, and his very soul was sick of the losing fight, though no sign of it showed in his face or body—that further news reached him concerning Serge Palma, and left him little room to doubt that his friend was dead.

Among the new arrivals one day was a man suffering from a gunshot wound in the thigh. It was not of recent date, but had broken out afresh through forced marching before the first healing was thoroughly accomplished.

Paul had him placed in hospital, and patched him up again, and gave instructions that he was not to move till the wound was perfectly healed. The man had bumped from Irkutsk in a springless teléga, and the hospital bed, poor as it was, was heaven to his bruised bones and torn flesh.

His name was Felix Ostrog. He was of the people, a bright, intelligent fellow who had imbibed evolutionary doctrines and done his small best to spread them. Hence—Kara.

It was in questioning him about his wound that Pavlof lighted on the news that cleared his path.

"It was thus, barin," said Ostrog. "There was in my artel in the convoy a man named Pavlof——"

"Ah!" said Paul, with a sudden accession of interest. "What was his first name?"

"Paul, barin, Paul Pavlof."

"I knew a Paul Pavlof. What was he like?"

"A bold fellow, with yellow hair and beard and blue eyes, a brave man and fearless as the devil."

"Yes, yes, get on!"

"We were in the hills by Karnsk. There are thick woods there, you know. Pavlof had been restless all along, and I knew he would make a break when the chance offered. It is no good one man bolting, you know. That gives one no chance. We talked as we walked, Pavlof and I and the others, and it was arranged that when he gave the signal a dozen of us would try the trick in different directions. Out of the lot there would be a chance for one or two, and the rest must pay the piper. The time came. We were in thick woods and we scattered like rabbits. It was shouts and shots, and screams from the women, and then I was lying in the brush with this hole in me. They found me soon enough. I had not got twenty yards away. And one by one they dragged the others in, all but two, who got clear——"

"And Pavlof was one of them?" asked Paul, in a fever.

"No, barin, Pavlof lay alongside me with a bullet through his head, and he was dead. It was a pity, for he was a fine-looking man——"

"You are sure he was dead?"

"Quite sure, barin, for he lay next to me, and they left him there when they threw me into the teléga and formed up and moved on. Oh, yes; he was dead, or they would not have left him there. And I saw the hole through his head. No man could live with a hole like that in his head."

"So!" said Paul, very thoughtfully. "Now you must lie quite still till you heal up."

"I could lie quite still for ever, barin."

That night, as Paul went up the hill to see his patient in the tent, his pulse was racing, and not with typhus.

Captain Sokolof was off his head and maundering fitfully of things and scenes that did not redound over much to his credit.

Hope and Madame Roskova were sitting outside the tent to escape as much as possible these unconscious revelations, and when Pavlof had visited his patient, and given his nurses fresh instructions, and promised them an orderly in case he got too much for them, he asked Hope to walk back with him down the hill.

She looked at him with quick expectation, and as soon as they were out of hearing, asked breathlessly, "Some news?"

"Yes, news, and I think definite and final," and he briefly told her what he had learnt from Ostrog.

She walked silently by his side, and finally said, very quietly—

"I am glad you have told me. Anything is better than that terrible suspense. Poor Serge! Yes, he is dead——"

They spoke little to one another that night, and presently she turned and went up the hill again, and he went back to his work.

But now his thoughts were unchained. If Serge were indeed dead, and there seemed no reasonable doubt of it, there was no earthly reason why they should not come together, no reason why the long fiction of their wedded state should not become fact at last. And he went about among his sick with a new light in his face, and a spark in his dark eyes that gave the sick men more hope of themselves and their prospects.

During the next few days he met Hope at least twice a day, but they hardly spoke, and then only in the presence of others. But Paul felt his heart going like a drum each time he climbed the hill, at thought of seeing her, and to his eyes she was changed. She was no longer an impossible Hope, but had suddenly become possible, and his thoughts and his pulses raced to meet her.

On the fourth night after he had told her Ostrog's news, he found it necessary to go to his house for a book he had promised to one of his few convalescents.

There was a light in the window. It might be only the police having a rake round in his absence, though that was not very likely, since discipline was much relaxed and he himself almost exempt from supervision.

It might be Hope come down on some errand similar to his own. He quickened his step to the quickening of his heart, turned the handle, and stood face to face with her.

For a moment they stood and looked at one another in a silence that was full of voices, heart calling to heart till there was no sound in all the world for them but the sound of it. The fires long pent up within him blazed out at last. He could no longer have checked them if he would. He would not if he could. His starved heart had burst the bonds so rigorously imposed upon it through all these weary months. The wall of partition was down and nothing stood between them.

The fire in his eyes evoked a responsive glow in hers. He threw out his arms towards her and strode over the dead past.

"Hope! Hope! My beloved! You must come to me. My heart is breaking for you," and he wound his arms about her, and strained her to him, and covered her face with hot kisses.

"At last! At last!" he panted. "My God! it has been hard to wait. And you——?" he flamed, fierce with the tumult that was in him. Had any intervened between them at that moment he would have rent him in pieces.

For answer she wound her arms round his neck and strained herself still closer to him, panting little sobs of joy and sorrow and pity, and then lay still in his arms with a restful sigh.

"God be thanked!" he said, in a voice so deep with emotion that it thrilled her as she lay against his leaping heart and knew that it was all for her.

He slipped back the hood of her cloak and stroked her hair, and kissed it and her eyes, again and again, and yet again and again, as though he would never cease.

"My cup is full. I have nothing left to ask for. Kara is heaven."

"Paul," she said, drawing his head down towards her. "You are sure, quite sure——"

He stopped her with kisses till she held him away.

"Sure we are justified?" she jerked out, between her efforts to stay him.

"My heart says so, dearest. It has hungered and waited all these months. It would have waited still had there been any need."

He turned the lamp to a glow-worm glimmer, and they sat long in the darkness, with no more than a whispered word between them now and again. It was enough that the barrier was down and they were together.

"My heart was dying of starvation," Hope murmured one time, "and you were so cold, so cold."

"Ah, you know why," he said. "The fire was so fierce that I had to cloak it with ice."

"And poor Anna!" said Hope again. "She looked upon me as the last strange product of civilisation, and no wonder."

"Yes, it exercised her greatly, but we will trouble her no more."

She was silent for a time. Then she said softly, "You will wait still awhile, Paul?"

"I will wait your time, dearest. The knowledge that I have your love makes a new man of me. All the rest can wait."

Then at last he took her up the hill again, and parted from her in the darkness before they reached the tent. And so, back to his patients, with a spring in his step and that light in his face which was like a breath of new life in the pungent wards.

Thanks to Pavlof's unremitting attentions, and the careful nursing of Hope and Madame Roskova, Captain Sokolof came slowly out of the shadows on the hillside and knew to whom he owed his life. His prison kameras were cleaner and emptier than he had ever known them, when at last he was able to resume his duties. But the fact that he still lived, where so many had died, was never absent from him.

He said little. Talking was not his strong point. But he never forgot, and he took his own way of showing what was in him.

Colonel Zazarin had escaped the infection. He believed that a Governor's first duty was to keep himself in condition to govern, even though he did it by proxy. He kept aloof from the prisons, therefore, and allowed no man near him whose duties took him into them. And so, for that time, he went free. But, since over-anxiety for life is not the best safeguard against disease, so in due course Colonel Zazarin fell into another pit in spite of all his precautions.

All through the lingering summer months the unequal fight in the prisons went on, a losing fight, incessant, heart-breaking. But for the inspiration of his new relations with Hope there were times when Paul would have cast himself down, sick to death of it all, and careless whether he ever got up again. But the thought of her, of her greater need than ever now of his help and comforting, of the still closer union that time would bring—these things braced him back to life. His heart was glad and his body responded to it, and brought him unscathed through the fiery furnace, though he spared himself no whit.

It was not till the first snows came that the virulence of the plague began to slacken, and it was a month longer before Paul felt himself at liberty to occupy his own house again.

Hope had been there for some weeks past with Madame Roskova to keep her company. But the moment Madame heard of Paul's coming she signified her intention of returning to Marya Verskaïa up the valley.

"And, my dear," she said, with impressive kindliness, to Hope, "I do hope you will be happier together than you were, and will live together as God meant you to do when He joined your lives."

And this time Hope did not ask her to stop.

CHAPTER XIX

HOW HOPE IMPOSED HER WILL UPON HIM

As Paul sat before the stove and watched Hope prepare his supper, that first night of his return, his whole being ached for her.

But it was so much to have her love, and to have her there, that he would ask no more till—till he could wait no longer.

After supper she flitted to and fro on her household duties like a bird in its tiny cage, and there seemed no end to the things she had to do, though what might be the necessity for them all he could not tell, nor could she have told if he had asked her.

He sat quietly smoking for a time and watched her through the smoke. Then he laid aside his pipe and caught her as she passed one time, and drew her to his knee, and she felt the strong arm round her waist throbbing furiously.

She had been vaguely nervous of she knew not what, and had been making work to postpone its coming. But she knew, as she lay in his arms and looked up into the restrained eagerness of his face and the lovelight in his dark eyes, that she was queen, and that her slightest wish would be his law.

And as she lay there, and the tension of her nerves slackened, she laughed softly to herself, and he looked at her in surprise.

"What are you laughing at? My foolishness? I count it wisdom."

"It was at my own," she said. "I was a little bit afraid of you, Paul."

"That you shall never be. I am yours to command as long as life lasts. Whatever you wish shall be."

She lay silent again in his arms and then said softly—

"We will wait one month more—and then——"

"Then?"

"Then——" and she drew down his head and kissed him warmly on the lips.

CHAPTER XX

HOW THE TIME CAME TO AN END

Thirty little days to the crowning of their lives. Since Hope last saw her husband a thousand long days had passed, wearily and full of sorrows. Since Paul last saw his friend, two-thirds as many. And the only news they had had of him in all that time had been reports of his death. Yet, to both of them, these thirty days seemed freighted with all possibilities.

It was no mere whim or wish to feel her power which had dictated Hope's decision to wait this one month more.

She believed they had waited long enough. In her heart she had not a doubt that Serge was dead. But, with a desire to act with the most scrupulous fairness to his memory, she would give Providence this final chance of intervention, if that was to be. Her conscience was perfectly clean in the matter, and happiness was within her reach. Yet, with a womanly instinct against over-haste in such a case; with a womanly abnegation of herself where her own happiness depended on her own out-reaching for it; and, perhaps, unconsciously to some extent, as a final justification of herself should such ever be needed, she deliberately imposed the bar of her will upon him for those thirty days and watched their passage with very mingled feelings.

As for Paul, he was happier than he had ever believed it possible for mortal man to be. So very happy was he that momentary fears of the reality of it all would flit across his heart.

Could it be possible that Fate would trick them in those thirty days and dash the full cup from their thirsty lips?

Yet surely they were justified in the step they were about to take. They had waited and hoped—yes, hoped, he for her sake, and she for Serge's—till hope had died of sheer starvation. Now that a new cup of happiness was held out to them should they not drink it? And yet, being no more than mortal man, he could not wholly still his fears. For when the cup is filled to running over, filled so full that heaven shines through the brimming rim and rings it with a crown of light, man, being at best but of limited faith, must, always and inevitably, fear lest the instability of all things earthly should spill it ere he drink.

He believed they were justified, and in those final days of waiting he drank deep of her love, deep draughts of pure delight which never could be taken from him, come what might.

His thoughts overleaped the days to the last one of all—and the one beyond it. And he thought deeply, for the circumstances in which they were placed were very extraordinary, and his whole desire was for the smoothing of Hope's path into this new sweet life.

In the eyes of the law, and of the circumscribed world in which their lives were cast, they were already husband and wife.

In the sight of God, and in the firm belief that Serge Palma was dead, they knew of no adequate reason why they should not become in reality that which they outwardly seemed to be.

And again, in the sight of the law of the land, Hope was free to marry whom she would, since exile is legal death and death breaks all legal ties, though he knew she would never dream of marrying if the faintest hope remained to her of Serge's being alive.

Since no priest was available, and no formal ceremony was possible, they must marry themselves; and if ever they reached a land of freedom they would, for the satisfaction of the proprieties, go through any such ceremony as the law of that land might require to legalise their union there.

And so those thirty days passed slowly, swiftly. Slowly, to the thoughts that would outrun them. Swiftly, for the happiness that was compressed into them.

Each thought each had known the other, yet no day passed without its new revelation. They looked at one another with new eyes and each found the other changing day by day.

Paul found new beauties of winsomeness in Hope each time he looked at her, for the outward reflects the inward and her soul was at the Spring, and in truth all she had gone through had fined her like gold in the fire.

And to Hope, her lover's passionate devotion and high self-control brought a depth of loving trustfulness which would have led her to his bidding whatever it had been.

Their perfect faith in one another grew with the days. Their love expanded like a glorious flower when the winter of discontent is passed, and the quickening rains and sunshine of the spring have worked in it, and the summer of delight is come.

Their tiny rough house of logs and clay became a very shrine of loveliness. Its half-opaque windows were diamonds, its furnishings of cedar-wood, its commonest utensils rarest china and purest gold. For love transforms the world.

At times when he was away—for there was still much work for him in the prison and the hospital—she would turn out her scanty stock of clothing and set to work on it with the true womanly instinct for adornment. And many times she laughed at herself and her futile attempts at turning old things into new, for fashions at Kara ran to warmth and comfort and knew no other considerations.

But to him she was robed like a princess and her beauty increased with the hours. When he was away from her he hungered to be back. When she placed his supper on the board he would bend and kiss the fingers that held the plate, and throw an arm round her and draw her close, and kiss her waist, her arm, anything that was part of Hope Ivanovna.

For his heart had starved valiantly and without complaint for years, and now the time of plenty had arrived.

How nervous and excited she was that last day of the thirty! With what passionate worship he had kissed her in the morning before he left her. And then he had come back and caught her to him again, and strained her close, and closer still. And then he flung up his arms and cried "Ah God! Ah God!" and went quickly.

And she could do no work that day, but fluttered restlessly about the house, and stood and looked at the driving snow, and made futile attempts at further cleaning up of the diamonds and the cedar-wood and the gold, which were already polished beyond the polishing of ordinary human hands.

And so the day passed somehow, but how she hardly knew. She had no desire for ordinary human food, and yet she ate, and prepared for him a meal beyond the wont.

And when at last he came in, later than usual and smothered in snow, his face was all aglow, with the whipping of the wind may be, and the diamond windows hid their sparkles at sight of his eyes.

He was quieter than usual while he ate that night, and it is possible that if he had been asked, five minutes later, on what he had fared, he would not have known, for he was thinking of greater things.

Out of a full heart the mouth speaketh, but there are times when the heart is overfull for speech.

When life is at its starry point speech is a desecration, and so they sat before the stove in silence and gazed into its glowing heart, while the minutes ran out and each one brought the new life nearer.

He drew her hand between his two hands, and felt the full tide of her love pulsing through it as she felt his.

A solemn sense of expectation was on them. The vague unrest was gone. The happy riot of their love-making was stilled. Their time had come. The past lay a-dying, and the new life lay cradled within the hour.

The very depth of their gladness filled them with a sense of awe. It was in no light humour that these two came together.

As the little German clock on the shelf told midnight, Paul stood up, and she stood facing him on the instant, as though they two were indeed already one, as though one thought and one heart already moved them both.

"Dearest!" he said, in those deep tones that came right from his heart and set her own heart thrilling in response. "The time we have waited for is come. I do not ask if your heart is changed. I know it is not."

Her eyes were like stars as he looked deep into them, and found there nothing but pure love and steadfast faith.

"You trust me, Hope Ivanovna?"

"With my life."

"We have no priest. We can have no witnesses. What we do is in the sight of God alone."

"I am content."

"Kneel with me, dearest."

And they knelt by a chair—a chair that had been made by a carpenter who had murdered his wife, and so had been sent to build up the empire in the East. But it was a well-made chair in spite of its origin, and for these two it became a solemn altar.

They had no candles, no crowns, no carpet, no incense, no choir. Nothing but the convict's chair and the rough wood floor, and their two selves, and God. But the chair was clean, and the floor was clean, and their hearts were clean.

They knelt in silence for a time, such time as the priest, had he been there, would have been praying over them. And the little German clock on the shelf cried "Quick! Quick! Quick! Quick!" as though he feared that something might step in between them even now.

But nothing was abroad that night. The wind howled round the corners of the house, and rumbled in the clay chimney. It piled the snow high against the windward side, and snapped the long icicles that hung to the ground on the other side. But inside there was a great silence.

Then Paul took her right hand in his and said, in the voice that came from his heart, "In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, I, Paul Ivanuitch Pavlof, take thee, Hope Ivanovna Arskaïa"—she noticed it—"to be my lawful wedded wife. Before Almighty God I swear to honour and serve thee, body and soul, and to defend thee against the world so long as life is left to me."

And she, sweetly and firmly, "In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, I, Hope Ivanovna Arskaïa, take thee, Paul Ivanuitch Pavlof, to be my lawful wedded husband. Before Almighty God I pledge myself to honour and serve thee, body and soul, so long as life is left to me."

"Amen!" he said solemnly, and she "Amen!"

They remained kneeling for a time, such time as the priest, had he been there, would have been invoking many strange blessings on their union.

Then, still kneeling, they kissed as they had never kissed before.

He raised her gallantly, and stood, and looked deep into her eyes again, and now they swam like stars in the sea, steadfast stars in a calm, deep sea.

"My dearest, my wife, you shall never regret this that we have done," he said.

"I shall never regret it," she said, in a voice that set his heart leaping to peals of silvery bells. And she put up her arms, and drew him down, and kissed him sweetly on the lips.

CHAPTER XXI

HOW THEIR CUP BRIMMED FULL

Winter was always a bitter time at Kara, a time of much hardship and suffering to the ill-found and ill-fed prisoners, and to the members of the Free Command a time of pinching struggle to make both ends meet. But it was also an opportunity for much self-sacrificing generosity and the sharing of little with those who had less. For the Government allowance of twelve shillings a month did not go far, when firing and lighting were added to the already heavy burden of food and clothing; and the means of outside increment, few at best, were almost eliminated by the absurd restrictions of the law.

Of course there were occasional remittances from home, some of which reached their destinations, and were valued at many times their intrinsic worth because of the remembrances they brought; but many of which never arrived at all and wasted themselves on objects very different from those intended by the senders.

It was a time of mutual help all round. And if all outside was cold black and white, inside was much rosy cheer and much good fellowship, when the members of the community met at this house or that, to save fires and lights for the rest.

But that winter was long remembered above all previous winters for the delightful hospitality of the Palma cottage.

Serge Petrovitch had always been helpful and freehanded. That winter his and his wife's generosity knew no bounds. The little house was open to all, and scarcely a night in the week but its windows gleamed like hospitable jewels, while all around was wintry desolation of ice and snow, and above, a sky as grim as a curse.

The glowing heart of the rough clay stove never once died out the winter through, and the hearts of its owners were warm to all the world.

They were completely and absolutely happy. The brimming cup had reached their lips unspilled, and the deeper they drank of it the more there was in it. It overflowed on all around and carried new strength to the weary and uplifting for all.

And Anna Roskova especially rejoiced and took credit to herself, for she was convinced that it was her outspoken reasoning with Hope that had removed the unbelievable estrangement between these two. And when she nodded knowingly to her hostess, and sometimes quietly rallied her on the subject, Hope would smilingly acknowledge, what all the world could see, that she was as happy as the day and night were long.

For a time the police, as was their custom, used to intrude upon them now and again to see what mischief was afoot. But finding nothing but cheerful, unconspiring faces and much merry talk, and always the proffer of a cup of hot tea, their visits ceased. Not but that they would have liked to continue them for sake of the material benefits, for cheerful faces and merry talk were none too common at Kara. But, though the sheep may perforce receive the sheepdogs with politeness, they can never mingle on friendly terms. Many a Cossack guard looked enviously at the glowing windows of the Palma house that winter, and wished himself a political prisoner so that he might be inside.

Captain Sokolof maintained very friendly relations with them, and that was beneficial in many ways. It lightened the surveillance of his inferiors, and, since he insisted on Paul's acceptance of the official salary for his medical work, it placed them in a position of affluence compared with their neighbours, and their neighbours reaped the benefit.

Sokolof never forgot that he owed his life to these two. More than once he hinted that he was working in their behalf, though he did not specify how, and he constantly and openly expressed to them his disgust at the neglect his communications suffered at the hands of his superiors at St. Petersburg.

"Now if I had my way," he said once, "I would have every official of the Ministry serve a term in Siberia so that they should know how things really are. They would learn a great deal that it would do them good to know. They have their pleasures and their functions and their pressing matters close at hand, and Kara is very far away, and Kara can wait."

Colonel Zazarin troubled them little. He was not their immediate official head, and only came in contact with them by a descent from his pedestal. They had shown him as plainly as they dared, when he did call upon them, that he was not wanted, and by degrees his visits fell off. Then, too, he had had a great scare with the typhus, and he still deemed it good for his health to keep aloof from prisons and prisoners as much as he possibly could.

So all through that winter the heart of the stove glowed warmly, and the samovar was always on the boil. And Hope Pavlova baked incessantly, and was busy and happy from morning till night, but happiest at night when her little house was packed like a biscuit-box with less favoured folk, whose faces smiled at sight of her in spite of all their woes.

So radiant was she then that they wondered at her new rich beauty, and discussed among themselves what had come to her. And over their tea and cakes, to which some of them had been looking forward with keen anticipation all through the long cold day, they talked and talked—these victims of great ideas, and very harmless victims, most of them—and sometimes they laughed and sometimes even sang.

A smaller sphere could hardly have been found, nor a narrower, nor a gloomier. But these two, by the wealth of love that was in their own hearts, and by the beauty of life that had come to them through their love, touched all these smaller lives with the gladness of hope, and strengthened them for the sorrows they had to bear.

It was in those long winter days and nights that Hope undertook to introduce her husband to the peculiarities and beauties of the English language, which she herself, as her mother's daughter, spoke with ease and fluency. He was an apt pupil, and made rapid progress, and many a hearty laugh rose over their lessons and his first barbarous attempts at pronunciation. That was how, thanks to her stringent drilling, he came, in later days, to speak English like an educated Scotchman, an accomplishment which any man may be proud of, and which stood him in good stead when the time came.

Yes, winter at Kara is a hard and bitter time at best, and for some a time of dull anguish and black despair. To such, as far as they could get at them, Hope and Pavlof became minor providences, where the major came like to be forgotten or abjured through utter hopelessness and misery.

They cheered, and comforted, and fed starved souls and bodies alike, and shared to the full their own overflowing happiness with those who had none, and felt the richer for all they gave.

CHAPTER XXII

HOW THE CUP SPILLED

So the winter waxed and waned, and the skies began to brighten to the spring. The snows disappeared, except on the hills, the roads were knee-deep tracts of mud, and Colonel Zazarin, having escaped the typhus, was down with typhoid, and was a very sick man.

Pavlof prevailed on Hope and Madame Roskova to take charge of him, since nothing but the most careful nursing could save his life. They both detested the man, Hope for sufficient reason, and Anna by instinct, but neither was the woman to leave even an enemy in extremity.

Pavlof had laboured mightily all through the winter on such necessary sanitary improvements as might check, to some extent, the recurrence of the fever when the warmer weather came. And Sokolof, in the light of the previous year's experiences, did what he could to help him. He could give him free labour to any extent almost, but had received neither money nor encouragement from headquarters in answer to his applications, and so Pavlof's improvements must necessarily be of a homely character. But they were such crying evils that he had to fight, the appeal they made to the senses was so vital, that a blind man could have discovered them and known by his nose what needed to be done.

It was a busy, happy time for him, and he asked no more, for himself, than that the authorities at St. Petersburg should continue their neglect of Kara and leave him in possession of the field.

But one afternoon there came rattling up from Ust Kara a strange lieutenant of gendarmes, attended by two armed orderlies, and evidently in a hurry. He inquired for Captain Sokolof's quarters and descended from his teléga there with an air of relief and much stretching of the legs.

A quarter of an hour later Sokolof's orderly was hunting through the settlement for "Serge Palma," with instructions to attend him to his own house.

Thither came to him presently Captain Sokolof himself in great perturbation of mind. Paul, in fact, had never seen the hard face so moved.

"Palma," said the captain, "I bring you ill news. I tried to do you a kindness and this is the result. They have sent orders to move you on to Yakutsk. It is damnable. I told them of all your good work here, and this is their answer," and he delivered himself volcanically of his feelings on the matter, while Paul braced up under the blow.

"When?" was all that he asked at last.

"At once. I am to deliver you to this man, and his instructions are to carry you without delay to Yakutsk," and the hard face was all twisted between indignation and pity.

"What must be, must," said Paul philosophically. "The Governor will probably die, but I suppose we can't help that. What about my wife? Is it province or town?"

"Province. It is an awful life for a woman. But she has the right to go with you if she will. I shall do all I can to get the order reversed. Perhaps Madame would wait——"

"I will see her at once. Can we have till to-morrow morning?"

"I will arrange that. It is damnable. Let me know if Madame decides to go and I will procure her conveyance. There is Zazarin's tarantas. He will probably never need it again. Oh, it is damnable!" and Sokolof cursed his way back to his own quarters, while Pavlof sat with his head in his hands and tried to look this last blow of fate squarely in the face.

For life among the outer barbarians of the Yakut uluses, ignorant even of the most elementary decencies of life, cut off absolutely from civilisation, is life at its very lowest and its very worst.

How could he ask Hope to accompany him to such a place? How dissuade her from going? Nay, he knew beforehand that she would go. And, sitting there in utterest misery, he forecasted the marring and degrading of her bright young life and the breaking of their newborn happiness.

But there was little time for sitting still. Hope must be told and at once, and he went off heavily to Colonel Zazarin's house.

He paid a somewhat perfunctory visit to his patient and beckoned Hope out of the room. She had seen the trouble in his face and followed him anxiously.

"What is it?" she asked, with a hand on his arm.

"Bad news, dearest. The worst possible news,"—at the moment he could conceive no worse. "A special messenger has arrived from St. Petersburg. I am ordered to Yakutsk."

"Yakutsk!" she gasped, for she knew all that it implied.

"Sokolof is beside himself. He has been endeavouring to better our condition. He looks on this as their answer. It is grievous treatment, but there is nothing for it but to submit. But, Hope, it is possible it may be only for a time. Sokolof, I know, will do his utmost in the matter. For yourself, dearest——"

"Where you go, I go," she broke in hastily.

"But, Hope—Yakutsk!"

"I know, I know. But we will not be separated."

"God help us!" he said. "I dare not think of you there."

"And I dare not think of myself anywhere but there, Paul. No, we will go together. When is it?"

"To-morrow."

"To-morrow! Then we have no time to lose. I will go at once and get things ready."

"And I must go and tell Sokolof that you decide to go."

CHAPTER XXIII

HOW ONE CAME BACK FROM THE DEAD

Captain Sokolof's orderly never for one moment thought of standing on ceremony with the doctor, who was in and out of the very prison all day long. He showed him at once to the room where the captain was entertaining his guest.

Pavlof crossed the threshold and stood numb and dazed. His eyes blinked at the newcomer in a stare of petrified horror. Then they wrenched themselves away and fixed hypnotically on Sokolof, who gazed back, at him with pity.

Sokolof thought he understood. He knew what Yakutsk meant. He knew that few survived it, and that most would prefer death to trying it, and that for a woman it was impossible.

"She will not go?" said the captain commiseratingly. "And yet, I don't know but what she is right. It is no place for a woman. And perhaps she will change her mind."

But Pavlof did not speak, did nothing but stare at him as if he were a ghost.

"Take heart, Palma," he growled, in the nearest approach to kindliness which twenty years in the gendarmerie had left him. "Take heart. I will not rest till this matter is righted. It is too damnable! There is some mistake. This is Lieutenant Vinsky, who brings the bad news."

But there was more here than Captain Sokolof remotely dreamed of.

Paul had put up his hand to the doorpost for support. His head was spinning. The two men at the table and the lights in the room began to swim slowly round and round. The doorpost began to reel on its own account and tried to slip out of his fingers.

For the man who sat there hobnobbing with Sokolof—trim, official, booted and belted, perfectly satisfied with himself and his surroundings—was Serge Palma in the flesh, and his bold blue eye had winked encouragingly and admonishingly at Paul the moment he entered the room.

"Vodka," said Sokolof, and sprang up and slid a chair under Pavlof, and hastened to bring him brandy in a glass. "It has been too much for him. Damn those—um——" for it is not always wise to express one's feelings concerning one's superiors, even though the grounds be ample.

"I am with you, Captain," said Palma heartily. "Petersburg lacks heart, and the Ministry of the Interior is destitute of the most elementary bowels of compassion. If they had to carry out their own instructions they would learn many things they are ignorant of."

"It is true," growled Sokolof, but said no more. Even people who agreed with you in their hearts sometimes made the most of one's indiscretions, and reported them behind one's back to one's undoing.

"So, Mr. Palma," said Serge, the instant he saw Paul pulling himself together, "Madame is not inclined for Yakutsk?"

Paul shook his head vaguely, without looking at him. His brain was in a tangle, but, slowly and confusedly, it was beginning to work again and to piece things together.

"It is truly a terrible place for any civilised being to go to," said Serge. "And one cannot be surprised at Madame's hesitation. It is natural. But, after all, a wife's place is by her husband's side. Perhaps, as Captain Sokolof says, she may change her mind before morning. It would be better for her to change it now than when we are gone. It is a bad journey at best, but we would do all in our power to smooth it for her. I think you should talk with her again on the subject, Mr. Palma."

"Yes," nodded Pavlof, understanding dimly what was expected of him, "I will talk with her again."

"And what, in Heaven's name, are we to do here without you?" said Sokolof.

"You must get out a doctor before the summer comes," said Paul dully.

"Da! Must! That is all very well, but we are dependent on those——"

"Fools," suggested Serge heartily.

"Well, those gentlemen who sit in comfort in St. Petersburg, and whose thoughts don't carry as far as Kara."

"I will go," said Paul, getting up. "I will go—and speak with her again," and he went out, feeling like one who has fallen on his head and is going home to tell of the accident.

The thought of Yakutsk was horrifying to Hope. But Paul would be with her and that would make up for much. He had made Kara a heaven for her. Well, they would carry their heaven with them wherever they went,—ay, even to Yakutsk. And perhaps it might be only for a time, and then they would be allowed to come back to Kara.

What happiness the rough little house had held for them! She would have liked to take that chair with her—that chair at which they had knelt the other night. Perhaps Captain Sokolof would let her have it. She would get Paul to ask him.

It was hard to decide what else to take and what to leave, for if they took everything they had they would still be bare at Yakutsk, and in a thousand mile journey by teléga there was little room for superfluous baggage. Still, she would have that chair, whatever she had to leave behind.

She flitted busily to and fro, arranging and folding and tying into bundles.

She would put a bold face on matters and bear herself bravely, for she knew his fears were all for her. She would show him that he need not fear. The only thing on earth she feared was losing him. Side by side with him she could stand anything, even Yakutsk.

With such thoughts working in her, the face she turned on Pavlof when he opened the door was to him as the face of an angel. So high a courage, so much of tenderness, so much of love were in it. He never forgot it.

"Paul, my dear——" she began, and broke off short at sight of his ghastly face.

"Oh, what is it?" she cried, in new distress and terror, as he sank heavily on a seat.

"Listen, Hope," he said quietly, but his voice was as strained and unnatural as his face. "I have other news for you—terrible news——"