The Adventures of Miss Gregory/The Governor of the Gaol
XI.
THE GOVERNOR OF THE GAOL
A DOOR of his house opened upon the graveled yard of the prison, and Alexander, the son of Nicholas,—Alexander Nicolaievitch,—temporary acting Governor of the Gaol, had no need to go farther than the step to oversee the arrival of the new batch of prisoners as they were herded in under the oil-lamps of the gateway. He had been prepared for them even before the telephone message from the police bureau had warned him that they were to come; for there had been noise in the streets since the morning, and it was a time when those who broke silence in Russia usually broke heads as well.
The lamps in the gateway were bright in the early frost of the evening, and the doorstep upon which the Governor stood was within the circle of their illumination. The prisoners, some thirty of them, collected at a street corner in an indiscriminate charge by the police and soldiers, had a view of him as they were guided into the yard; their restless eyes took him in with the spike-crowned stone walls and all the hard formality of the prison. They saw him as a tall, burly figure in a gray uniform greatcoat, peaked cap, and boots; they had hardly time, perhaps, to note that his beard was as gray as his coat, or that the marks of rank upon his uniform showed that age was coming upon him without promotion. With more than thirty years of service behind him Alexander Nicolaievitch was still a lieutenant, upon a lieutenant's pay, with no hope even of being confirmed in the post of Governor of the Gaol and so securing a provision for his old age.
From his place on the doorstep, he looked down on the new prisoners with a stolid countenance. The last of them was in, and the warder on duty was closing the big gate behind them with a jar of iron bolts. Most of them were young men of the student and clerk types; but there were also two or three women. The Governor noted that one of these leaned upon the arm of a friend and sobbed quietly, but without ceasing, her free hand covering her face, while the woman who supported her stood patiently at her side, and let her weep without seeking to suppress her. It was this last upon whom the Governor's gaze dwelt finally—a short, sturdy woman, not much younger than himself, who alone, of that nervous, uneasy throng, seemed entirely at her ease. Her smooth gray hair swept back from a strong, cheerful face, and she looked about her with a quiet watchfulness, as if she were preparing to deal firmly with her environment. There was nothing in her of the strained alertness that characterized the others; she was serene, critical, a figure of force.
"The police will send the papers to-morrow." The sergeant who spoke nodded confidentially at the Governor.
"Very well," he answered. It was a frequent irregularity of those unquiet times, when the mechanism of government was adapted at a moment's notice to new and strange uses. "Take them in," he ordered.
"Forward, there!" shouted the sergeant; and the police began to bustle the prisoners toward the door of the prison building, where, for lack of cells to accommodate them, they were to pass the night in the corridor. The crowd of them, that had come quickly enough through the streets under guard, seemed to discover a reluctance to pass definitely under lock and key; they shuffled and hung back, and the Governor heard their breathing, suddenly harsh and short.
"Get along, there!" shouted the sergeant, in a spasm of peremptory activity. "Drive them in, men. What are you waiting for? In with you!"
He was a gaunt man with high cheek-bones like a Chinaman, and furry red hair under his cap. He thrust roughly among the silent prisoners, and began to shove them forward by ones and twos, making a strange picture of violence by contrast with their unhappy passivity. His men did their part, and the throng of helpless men and women was set moving toward the open door. The weeping woman broke into a wail.
"Here," cried the sergeant, reaching toward her. "If you want to squawl, go and squawl inside!"
He had her by the nape of the neck, and his shove nearly threw her on her face. Only the arm of her companion saved her from a fall. The gray-haired woman steadied her, and looked over her shoulder at the sergeant with a face of grim wrath, and spoke half a dozen words in some crisp tongue that the Governor did not understand.
"On with you!" cried the sergeant, and would have laid hands upon them again. But the Governor, without moving, spoke a single word.
"Halt!" he said.
The word fetched the sergeant spinning round on his heel to face the grizzled officer. He stood as if in astonishment at the Governor's motionless figure and stolid face, and then, with a manner of pained resignation, saluted. Alexander Nicolaievitch had not spent more than thirty years with his regiment, to be misunderstood when he gave an order.
The gray-haired woman watched the sergeant's collapse, and permitted herself to give the Governor a little approving nod before she led her weeping companion after their fellows. The sergeant stared after them as they passed into the prison, and frowned in an effort of thought. He was to remain on duty in the gaol that night, and it occurred to him that he might find an opportunity to repay the snub that he had received, with interest.
The Governor smiled as the gray-haired woman and her companion passed from sight. He liked the agreeable presumption of the nod she had given him. He had known recruits in the regiment, raw mujiks new from the starved lands, who treated the Colonel with that same genial equality till it was knocked out of them. He put her down, in his mind, for some decent woman from a village who had found herself in the crowd when the arrests were made—his mother had been such a one. He was still smiling reminiscently as he turned back into the house and entered the sitting-room, where he had left his wife when the arrival of the prisoners was announced to him.
His wife was seated at the desk which is part of the furniture of every Russian house, and looked up with puckered brows as he came in. She was a stout, gray woman who would have been placid and a little colorless but for the insistent worries that attend a life limited by a lieutenant's pay. When he went out, the pair of them had been at work upon accounts, and she had before her a sheaf of bills and an abacus, the contrivance of red and blue beads on a frame of wires with which the Russian helps out his arithmetic.
"All right?" she asked perfunctorily.
"Yes, all right," he answered, sitting down at the other side of the desk, with his cap on his knees. "Thirty-two prisoners—arrests on the street."
She heard him without attention; her eyes were on the papers before her. They had not been out of debt for twenty years; for even a Russian lieutenant, married and elderly, with no social credit to maintain, must preserve a certain decency of appearance upon a strictly inelastic scale of pay, and juggling with their accounts was one of their chief occupations.
"There's eighty roubles we ought to pay at once," she suggested. "I suppose"
Alexander Nicolaievitch shook his head. Varvara, his wife, stared at him a moment or two consideringly.
"Then we pay nothing this month?" she inquired.
"How can we? You know what money there is," answered her husband, for it was Varvara who kept the purse. "As Governor here, I am only paid quarterly, and it won't last the quarter."
Varvara drew the abacus toward her with her plump red hands, rough with a life of kitchen work.
"Then," she said, making it ready for a sum in addition,—"then you've no hope—no hope at all—of—of"
"Of what? Of being confirmed?" Alexander Nicolaievitch laughed shortly. "Think, Varvara! The chief has five daughters, all married—five sons-in-law to provide for! Why, the thing's as good as settled. I might as well hope to be a general—a minister—as Governor here. No; it'll last a couple of months, and that's something, you know. And then—back to the regiment."
"It'll last," said Varvara, with bitter conviction, "as long as this trouble lasts and there are dangerous men to be put in prison. When it's safe again, they'll send you off."
"It may be that," agreed her husband.
Varvara sighed. The temporary post as Governor of the Gaol represented the nearest approach they had ever made to prosperity. It carried with it a comfortable home, servants, a sufficient salary, and some consideration in the town. It was hard to reach it only to lose it, after precarious years in garrisons, with gold braid and authority to decorate their lives, and the mean, pressing every-day lack of money to render it all empty and tasteless. She glanced at the paper of figures before her.
"Seventy-eight and sixty-six," she murmured, and began to slap the red and blue beads back and forth smartly. Her husband let his cap slide to the floor, and sat back, watching her. There was nothing for him to say; and when he thought of the future, reaching forward through dull days of routine to an old age of black want for them both, he could only shudder and be dumb.
Varvara was still clicking her beads when the red-haired sergeant entered and saluted. He had come to report that the prisoners were duly established and their names taken.
"All right," said the Governor.
The sergeant saluted again, but hesitated. He still wore his injured air, as of a man who does his duty under difficulties.
"There is one," he said, "a woman, who says"
"Yes; what is it?" Alexander Nicolaievitch demanded curtly.
"She says she is English," said the sergeant. "There is a student who interprets for her, and she says that she is English, and that to-morrow we—that is, your Excellency—will have to answer for keeping her in prison. She is very threatening."
"Is she?"
"Yes. And she demands to see your Excellency."
"She'll see me presently, when I make my inspection," answered the Governor. "And the woman who was weeping—is she all right?"
The sergeant shifted his feet uneasily. "She is still weeping," he admitted. "They say that she was struck by somebody—out there, in the crowd."
"Somebody will be flogged, if I lay hands on him," said the Governor, eyeing the man gloomily. He had all a soldier's dislike for police methods. He nodded a dismissal, and the sergeant went, glad to take himself beyond the reach of further questions.
Varvara looked up from her calculations.
"If this Englishwoman makes trouble," she said, "they'll sacrifice you."
"Of course they will." agreed her husband, and stooped to raise his cap from the floor. It was time to make his visit to the gaol.
The woman who wept had come to rest at the far end of the corridor. Her gray-haired companion had steered her through the throng of prisoners and made her sit down upon her shawl, with her back against the wall. Here she crouched, and let her hand fall away from her face, so that those who were near could see that she was yet a girl, a meager, helpless thing, with one side of her face blackened and swollen as if some one had hit her with a bludgeon. As a matter of fact, it was a gun-butt, and the man who did it had hit her again—on the breast—so that now she could not find strength to stay her weeping. She lay back against the wall, crying helplessly. The prisoner who spoke English frowned at the sight, and spoke to her gray-haired friend.
"She is too feeble for all this," he said, in the clear, staccato tones of the educated Russian. He wore the uniform of a university student. "It is not a time for feeble people—no!"
The gray-haired woman was bending over the girl, with her handkerchief in her hand. She stood upright to reply to him.
"No," she agreed thoughtfully. "Feeble people are safe only in strong countries. That's the real trouble here, my friend. Now, do you think you could get me some water for her? That bruise ought to be bathed."
"I will try," said the student, and backed away through the people behind him.
The gray-haired woman sighed, and put her hands to her head in an endeavor to restore herself to some semblance of neatness. In the course of her travels—and she had traveled much—she had known experiences more alarming than the prospect of a night in prison, but few that had promised more of mere discomfort. The thirty-odd prisoners were settling down now, disposing themselves as best they could to spend the night on the stone floor; and already their breath made the narrow corridor oppressive. Some talked in low tones, and even laughed, and along their ranks there glowed the tips of cigarettes. She disliked the prospect of twelve or more hours without soap and water and oxygen, and she knew there would be weariness in rendering service to the hurt girl. Russia had got upon her nerves; it seemed to her that one could hardly touch its surface without discovering deeps of wrong and cruelty and pain. From her hotel in this dull provincial town of southern Russia she had gone out to the streets, drawn by the crowd below her windows, which seemed to hold out possibilities of interest. That there were also possibilities of danger was a fact Miss Gregory, author of the "Saharan Solitudes," was not likely to take into consideration.
"The most careful man I ever knew," she said once to her brother, when he addressed remonstrances to her on the subject of taking risks out of mere curiosity, "died of chloroform at his dentist's. So what's the use of bothering?"
In her fur cap and short fur-lined coat, she drifted with the crowd—just such a crowd as might gather in an English country town on a holiday evening. It moved aimlessly up and down the chief street; and now and again there was a little shouting, and once, at some distance from her, the cheerful noise of window-smashing. A student here and there attempted a speech, but failed to hold an audience; and a young man in ragged clothes, with a rapt, tormented face like a crazy angel, cleared a circle about him, and began, with tremendous gestures, to teach it a song. When the current of people had borne her past, she could still catch his high, rather hysterical voice, insisting again and again upon a single line of the song, and raving at the sheepish, staring people who would not take it up and sing it. It was very interesting, in its way, after Miss Gregory had got over a certain disappointment at the mildness and good nature of it; she felt she had a right to expect worse things of Russia in a season of general unrest. The student and the singer and the window-smashers gave her an impression of a nucleus, an insufficient leaven, of force and purpose striving in vain to overcome the inertia of an overpowering mass of dull and unappreciative people.
She was close to the corner of the street, and it was in her mind to turn and leave it all, when the surprise came. She was hemmed in among people, and could see only those next to her, so it came with no warning. A loud, harsh voice rasped some brief words that had the sound of an order, and on the heels of it there was a moment of astonished silence. Then the moving crowd halted and swayed and broke, and there were cries and yelps of fear and anger, as blue-uniformed men with weapons came driving through, striking to right and left of them with the flat of short swords and with the butts of rifles. They broke through the alarmed, unready people like a pack of hounds through stiff grass, and men and women went down before them under the impact of their rush and their blows. One of them charging along the pavement—a tall, red-headed fellow with the eyes and cheek-bones of a Chinaman—brushed Miss Gregory with his shoulder and sent her reeling against a wall. A girl near her uttered a little squeal of terror, and the soldier, thrusting toward her, heaved up his rifle and smashed her backward with the butt. The packed mass of people behind her kept her from falling to the ground, where she might have been safe from further injury, and he hewed at her again.
Miss Gregory, recovering her feet, had an instant's view of the girl's face, convulsed with pain and blindly uplifted; and then it was blotted from her as the steel-shod butt of the rifle beat it down. She screamed and ran forward; but the tall soldier had pushed on, and was busy a dozen paces away at a point where some students were grouped back to back and giving real trouble at last.
Miss Gregory raised the girl, a gasping sob of pain and terror, and applied herself to doing what little she could to restore and comfort her. There was nowhere to take her, and she could only hold her up against the wall and wait till the street should be cleared. Then, she promised herself, there should be a reckoning; people should learn what it cost to inconvenience and imperil the sister of Major-General Sir Howard Gregory of Addington Hall, Kent, the friend of ambassadors and ministers, the aunt of consuls general. She would have somebody's head on a charger for this—she even noted the phrase for use at a later stage. In a moody magnificence of wrath, she stood apart, upholding the sobbing girl, and saw the thrusting, fleeing crowd dissolve in to lonely little tragedies of swift grouping and violent dénouement. The wild-haired singer furnished one feverish incident. He came running down the road with a revolver in his hand, halting and swinging about to shoot at soldiers and policemen. Miss Gregory had a clear view of him as he came abreast of her, and saw, almost with awe, that the torment was gone from his face and it was radiant with glee and the joy of strife. Life had dealt niggardly with him hitherto, but now it was closing in a heaped-up opulence of sensation and action. For several minutes he was victorious and dangerous. The end came when he fired the last of his cartridges at a short, sturdy policeman, who ran at him and dodged spasmodically at the noise of the shot. The singer raised his revolver again, but it clicked uselessly. He dropped it, and as the policeman ran in on him with his short sword swung back for the thrust, he raised both arms heavenward in a sweeping gesture of superb surrender, and met the sword-point with his breast.
"The fool!" said Miss Gregory, to reassure herself. But she said it without conviction.
Five minutes later she found she was a prisoner, one of a sorry crowd that were hurriedly marshaled between guards and ordered to march. She wanted to protest, to demand the immediate presence of some superior officer who could put matters right; but to no purpose. The tall, red-haired soldier who had struck down the girl was the only person there who appeared to have authority; and at the sound of her voice he came alongside of her, panting with his exertions, and so plainly willing to murder her that she swallowed her indignation and moved on in silence, with the girl hanging weakly on her arm and never ceasing her sobs.
"To-morrow, then!" said Miss Gregory. "To-morrow we'll have things looked into. And until then—it's always stuff for the book!"
Miss Gregory had in hand a book of travels, the fruit of her later wanderings, for which she had great hopes. It was to be poignant with real humanity, alive with character—a book to set a standard for future generations. The reflection that her book would gain by it could reconcile her to almost any mischance.
The English-speaking student contrived somehow to obtain a bowl of water, and aided her to bathe the girl's bruised and swollen cheek. The poor, flimsy creature had not courage to support the sting of the cold water on her sore skin, and cried aloud as they tried to help her. Thus it was that the Governor of the Gaol, making his visit of inspection, came close behind them and spoke before they had noticed his arrival.
The student rose to his feet; Miss Gregory, on her knees before the injured girl, merely looked up.
"Who is it, and what does he want?" she inquired of the student, and continued calmly to steep her handkerchief in the bowl and lay its wetness on the girl's face.
"It is—what you call—the Governor of this place," explained the student. "He asks what is wrong here."
"Oh, does he!" Miss Gregory gave a terse explanation for translation to the Governor. "And that's not all," she went on, when the student had finished interpreting. "This girl was hit first on the breast—with a gun. She ought to be seen by a doctor at once. I can't open her dress to examine her here, with all these men about. If they mean her to die, she shall die decently. Tell him that, please."
Alexander Nicolaievitch heard this interpreted to him, standing over the group of them massively. Then he put a question.
"He says, can she walk?" explained the student to Miss Gregory.
"Nobody carried her here," was the answer. "Where does he want her to walk to?"
"He says," explained the student,—when this had been translated to the Governor and replied to,—"he says, she shall come to his house and his wife shall see her. And he says—you go, too."
"It's a doctor she wants," retorted Miss Gregory ungraciously; but she rose, and helped the girl to her feet.
Alexander Nicolaievitch looked at her closely, for he was revising his original estimate of her position and origin. He knew, as a piece of general information, that the English were an unaccountable race, not to be judged by ordinary, reasonable standards; but he liked the contemptuous power of her fresh-colored face and the solid responsibility of the whole of her.
The red-haired sergeant was in attendance upon the Governor, and when they reached the spot where he was waiting, half way down the corridor, he stepped aside to let them pass. It may have been sheer accident that caused him, in so doing, to place the heel of his heavy boot upon the hand of a recumbent prisoner; but it crunched sickeningly, as if he had thought it out cleverly, and the prisoner bounded where he lay, and tore his hand away with a yell. The girl on Miss Gregory's arm shivered and shrank close to her. Miss Gregory, with eyes snapping sparks, halted. But there was no need for the words that came to her lips. From behind them there reached forward the long, gray-sleeved arm of Alexander Nicolaievitch, soldier and disciplinarian, and the sergeant's red head whacked back against the wall from a resounding buffet in the face.
The sergeant flamed, a flame that died in less than a second, for he was a drilled man with the fear of authority rooted in his marrow. He blinked dizzily, and then saluted with a mechanical movement. The Governor looked at his fist and then at the sergeant, and Miss Gregory smiled approvingly when she saw the unbroken seriousness of his face. He had struck shrewdly and on the instant; but he had not lost his temper.
Varvara, with the abacus still in her hands, looked up at them over her spectacles as they entered; but it needed little explanation from her husband to make clear to her that the girl needed attention. She gave herself to the matter with a kind of silent, efficient promptness that comes of living long years garrisons; and in a very few minutes the in girl was lying on a bed, and Miss Gregory and the Governor's wife were trying to get into communication with each other across her mishandled body. It was fortunate that both knew a little German and neither knew much.
"It is a doctor she wants, then," agreed Varvara thoughtfully, when they had established this means of conversation.
"Natürlich," said Miss Gregory. "Of course."
She could not imagine what made Varvara hesitate; together they had uncovered injuries about the girl's body that made the plainest possible demands for skilled help.
"She—she has no money," remarked Varvara. She sighed, and turned away. "I will send for the doctor," she said.
"Oh, if money is necessary!" said Miss Gregory. She had plenty about her; she was equipped with pockets, like a man. She produced a couple of twenty-five-rouble notes and held them out.
Varvara looked at the long yellow notes curiously.
"That is too much for the doctor," she said. "Much too much! Five will be enough."
"Then give me change," said Miss Gregory.
"No," said Varvara. "Put that money back in your pocket till the doctor comes. I have not change enough in the house."
Miss Gregory did not quite understand. She restored the money to its pocket, as Varvara left the room, with the feeling that she had been quietly snubbed for some piece of ostentation, and it made her angry and uncomfortable. The sum, after all, was insignificant; and the woman had mentioned money, and hesitated. What was queer was that Varvara did not look in the least like a person who would grudge what she had to give, and Miss Gregory believed herself a judge of types. The true explanation flashed upon her only when the doctor had come, done his work, and was ready to go again, and it was time to pay him.
Varvara's messenger had summoned the first doctor he could find, a shabby little man with tired, red-rimmed eyes. He, too, was not able to muster change for a twenty-five-rouble note. He wanted six roubles for his fee and medicines, and he murmured apologetically as he patted himself all over, as if sounding for wealth concealed about his person, and smiled sadly.
"You can send me the change in the morning," suggested Miss Gregory. It was embarrassing to stand there and hold out the stiff symbol of money in that opulent way.
The doctor looked doubtful at this. He had understood Miss Gregory to be herself a prisoner, which meant that no one could tell from one hour to another what would happen to her.
Varvara sighed again. "I can manage six roubles," she said slowly. "I think I can manage six roubles."
She opened a drawer in a big wardrobe, and produced thence an iron cash-box with a formidable brass lock. She put it down on the foot of the bed while she fumbled for the key, and then wrestled awhile with the box before it would open. It seemed designed to keep a close enough guard on its contents; it resisted even its owner, clanking like a broken-down clock before its machinery surrendered and let Varvara raise the lid.
"I think I can manage it," she murmured, and turned the hoarded treasure out on the counterpane.
The doctor drew near to help her, and Miss Gregory leaned on the rail of the bed and watched them sorting half-roubles and twenty-kopeck pieces apart. The reluctant cash-box had seemed to imply title deeds, negotiable securities, and the like; but the little hoard of small coins was all it sheltered behind its formidable brass lock and steel bands. With the doctor's help, Varvara made up her six roubles, and had sixty kopecks over—about twenty-five cents. She paid the doctor, and proceeded to lock up what was left in that stern safe-deposit that would yield it up only to persuasion.
"Why!" thought Miss Gregory, aghast with enlightenment, as Varvara replaced the box in its drawer and locked the drawer. "Of course! What a pig I am! It's all she has; it's actually all the poor thing has!"
The discovery even made her a little timid when she had to meet Varvara's eyes again, and this was a new experience for Miss Gregory. That redoubted traveler in both the hemispheres was used to look all comers in the face and speak her mind in plain words; but the thought of her twenty-five-rouble, notes and her posture in offering them made her hot all over. She was grateful that Varvara merely concerned herself with bringing her warm water to wash with and making her comfortable.
"When you are ready," she told Miss Gregory, "there will be coffee downstairs."
The doctor had given the injured girl an opiate, so there was nothing to allege as an excuse for refusing the coffee; and, incidentally, she found herself debarred from a project she had entertained of demanding her release from the Governor of the Gaol and promising him complicated trouble if he did not grant it. Everything considered, that line of action no longer appealed to her.
It was a spruce Miss Gregory who presented herself in the little salon below—a Miss Gregory not only restored by soap and water to the outward proprieties, but a Miss Gregory with the complaisance and diamond-edged sweetness of a grande dame determined to capture the liking of her company. Alexander Nicolaievitch, with his fine, grizzled head showing an unexpected reverend quality now that it was bare, rose and bowed; Varvara looked up from her tray, with a smile. They were all gentlefolk together, for the time; the morrow, with its looming police-court, was not glanced upon. All their lives the Governor and his wife had been of the class that is saluted and made way for—the class that invented fine manners; the fact that sixty kopecks in an infirm cash-box stood between them and nakedness was nothing to the point. And as to Miss Gregory, there ranged behind her a noble perspective of county families of assured social prominence, of personality fortified by the unshaken esteem of her bankers. She met the bow of Alexander Nicolaievitch with just the right inclination, and gave Varvara back a smile more cordial than her own.
But, of course, something had to be done. Miss Gregory put the matter to Varvara, for the Governor had no word of any tongue but Russian.
"Do you think your husband could spare a messenger?" she asked. "You see, I mustn't put you to more trouble than I can help, and a note to the Chief of Police will put everything right."
"I will ask him," said Varvara. "But"—she glanced at a clock ticking upon the wall above Miss Gregory's head—"it is late for the Chief of Police."
It was just upon midnight.
"If only he gets it," said Miss Gregory, "really, he'll do what I want. Really he will, even if it puts him to the trouble of getting out of bed. Wirklich—really!"
But the best the Governor could do for her was to send her note off when the gaol guard was relieved in the morning. Till then he had no one who could leave the prison precincts—not even himself. There was a rule that he could not violate; he hoped Miss Gregory would understand.
Miss Gregory understood, of course. She gave him a nod and her best smile, as Varvara put it into halting German for her.
"But does the Chief of Police know you?" asked Varvara.
"I was out when he called at my hotel," answered Miss Gregory. "But he knows me. Oh, yes; he knows me."
She was willing to make the best of things, since she could not obtain her release; and when Miss Gregory chose, as she chose now, she could be a very agreeable companion. Alexander Nicolaievitch sat, perforce, outside the conversation, a massive and silent presence, rather splendid in his simple uniform; but Miss Gregory, as she warmed to conversation with Varvara, stole frequent glances at his good, capable gravity of countenance. After a while Varvara was telling her about the governorship of the gaol—how the temporary post had seemed to offer to them the means of closing their meager lives in security and comfort, and how that prospect had narrowed and faded.
"Still," said Varvara, "a soldier must be prepared for everything—nicht?"
Miss Gregory thought of her brother, the major-general at home in the spacious and ample comfort of Addington Hall, from whose sixty windows he could see no land but his own.
"Who gives this post?" she asked. "The Governor of the town, or who?"
"It is the Chief of Police," said Varvara. "But he is not our friend."
"Nor mine," said Miss Gregory thoughtfully. "Still"
She wrote the note that was to be despatched in the morning on the official paper that Alexander Nicolaievitch provided for her. She wrote it deliberately, in English. Let the Chief of Police find a translator, or take the consequences! She knew exactly how to touch him in the joints of his official armor. She made no threats, only demands; and offered him, for purposes of identification, the names of an Imperial Chancellor she had known in Paris, and the Minister of the Interior. It was a dignified piece of correspondence, with a sort of implicit ugliness of intention running through its formal phrasing, which she noted with satisfaction as she glanced it through before handing it to Alexander Nicolaievitch for dispatch.
"If he comes before I am up," she said to Varvara, "he can wait. He won't object."
Varvara smiled meditatively, and translated to her husband.
"If he comes, he shall be told," said the Governor gravely.
It was not that they doubted Miss Gregory; neither of them was given to the habit of doubt. But they did not understand her lightsome way of dealing with potentates and dignitaries. There was something of pity in Varvara's gentleness as she conducted Miss Gregory to the bed that was prepared for her; she felt sorry to think of her wakening to a morning whose light would find her powerless in the hands of the system that had made her prisoner.
"Even if—if his Excellency does not come," she said, pausing in the doorway, as she went from the room, "you are rich enough to pay a fine."
"He will come," Miss Gregory assured her. "He'll come. You'll see."
She would have liked to think things over for a while in bed, and arrange the day's impressions for storage in her memory toward the book she was to write. The experience would enhance those pages, so rich with things felt and considered. But, once between the sheets, with a night-dress of Varvara's upon her, she found herself unexpectedly weary.
"I can go over it to-morrow, at the hotel," she decided, and resigned herself to sleep.
But twice, ere she lost herself in slumber, she cocked an ear at a faint clicking noise, as of some one beating a tattoo with his nails on the table in the salon below. She had not been long enough in Russia to recognize the sound of the abacus.
She woke to broad daylight filling the window behind a frost-tracery, and to the unobtrusive presence of Varvara with a tray upon which steamed a glass of straw-colored tea. As soon as she opened her eyes, she was aware that her hostess no longer pitied her; her whole manner testified to subdued respect and admiration.
"Oh, thank you," said Miss Gregory, taking the tea. "How pretty it looks, doesn't it, with the lemon floating in it? Such a nice color to wake up to!"
"He is there," said Varvara solemnly. "He came at once. I told him he must wait, and he said: 'Certainly, certainly. Do not disturb her upon any account.' And he is waiting—as you said."
"That's right," answered Miss Gregory, sipping her tea comfortably. "But I hope he's not in your way."
"No," said Varvara. "No."
"Then I'll be down in half an hour or so, and talk to him. But how is the poor girl?"
"She suffers," Varvara told her. "The doctor has been, but he cannot do much here."
"That reminds me," said Miss Gregory, "I owe you six roubles. We'll have her removed to a hospital to-day. And now I'll get up."
In the salon, it had fallen to Alexander Nicolaievitch to keep the Chief of Police company and render first aid to that official's agitated dignity. He had seen his reception of Miss Gregory's directions to wait, and had wondered at his nervous compliance; his intelligence was not alert in such affairs.
"But why didn't you send for me at once?" the great man queried. "This may be a very serious affair—and you are to blame."
He was a stout man, bald and black-mustached, and the broad fur collar of his coat rose about his ears as he shrugged his shoulders.
"The lady doesn't agree with you," said Alexander shortly. "Nor do I."
"She blames—me?" asked the Chief eagerly. "She is very angry, eh? But you have made her comfortable, it seems. She will listen to reason. Don't you think she will listen to reason?"
"She speaks no Russian. How can I tell?" replied Alexander Nicolaievitch.
"Well!" The Chief of Police gave him a sour look. "If there is trouble, you will not gain by it, my friend! Such stupidity! Such imbecility! Such incompetence!"
"I am not very competent at police work," agreed the elder man, returning his look. "It's a dirty trade, and I am a soldier. But I am competent to crop the ears of any man who calls me an imbecile."
The Chief of Police was not immediately ready with a reply to this suggestion, and conversation languished till the appearance of Miss Gregory brought them both to their feet, bowing.
She came in, with her hat already on her head. Varvara's spectacles looked over her shoulder. She gave her host a greeting of smiles, and then turned to where the Chief of Police was waiting to bubble over with apologies.
"You got my note?" she demanded.
"I came upon the instant," he answered eagerly. "Madame, I am shocked—distressed! I am anxious to offer you my sincerest apologies, my most"
Miss Gregory interrupted him. "No," she said, "don't trouble! If you are the responsible person, I can't accept apologies, and your explanations will have to be made elsewhere. You understand?"
He did understand, though unwillingly.
"But, Madame," he begged, "it is a mistake—a most horrible mistake—a mistake of subordinates who shall suffer for it. You should have been released instantly. I cannot comprehend why this officer did not do so at once. It shall be looked into, Madame. There shall be an inquiry, and you shall be satisfied."
He was willing to take any way out of the entanglement; his plump, sophisticated face was almost agonized. Behind him, Alexander Nicolaievitch, who did not understand a single word, stood in massive gravity.
"This officer," said Miss Gregory, "has treated me with all possible courtesy and consideration. I am—I am greatly in his debt. That shall be made very clear."
"Oh!" The Chief of Police halted, on a sudden thought. He glanced from one to another of them inquiringly. "That, at least, is satisfactory," he said slowly. "Will Madame permit that I speak to him for a moment? He speaks only Russian."
"As you please," said Miss Gregory stiffly.
Mild, plump Varvara had understood no more than her husband of this talk; she had waited placidly in the background, outside this arena of incomprehensible issues. But when the Chief of Police turned and addressed her husband, she thrust a little forward, to be within reach of his words.
The Chief of Police did not waste strategy on his subordinate.
"I was going to sign your appointment today," he said, "as Governor of the Gaol. You wanted it, eh?"
"Yes," said Alexander Nicolaievitch; and Varvara took a step nearer. But"
"She says she is greatly obliged to you. If you speak to her she may hold her tongue. Will you?"
It was on the old officer's lips to say no—to tell the man that he might lie in the mud he had made. But he looked across at Varvara, and sighed. His day of fine impulsiveness was over; a heroic moment of refusal would have to be paid for by his wife as well as himself. The eyes of husband and wife met with a sort of shamed understanding and surrender to the compulsion of their poverty.
"Tell her, Varvara," he said.
Not the least interesting thing in Miss Gregory's memory of that transaction was the swift recovery of the Chief of Police. He had been crushed, flattened, reduced to limpness and pathos; but, even as he watched her face while Varvara made things clear to her, he showed signs of restoration. And when the explanation was over and Miss Gregory nodded acquiescingly, he was magically re-inflated.
"Ha!" he said strongly. "A dreadful affair; but it is something to see that Madame is none the worse. Still, the fools that arrested Madame—that sergeant, for instance"
"Yes," said Miss Gregory. "We can talk about him as we drive to my hotel."
Two minutes later, and the Governor of the Gaol and his wife had their house to themselves. They faced each other across the table in the salon, without speaking. Varvara was the first to move; she went to the desk and opened a drawer.
"What are you looking for?" asked Alexander Nicolaievitch.
"The abacus," she answered, producing it. "Now, sit down and attend to me. We shall be able to pay that eighty roubles, after all. Nine and twenty-seven and sixteen"