CHAPTER XV

HOW PAVLOF LEARNED HARD LESSONS

So the wintry days of their strange, anomalous life dragged on, and held no weariness of waiting for Paul Pavlof, rather a fulness of content as of one who, believing his treasure was lost to him for ever, has unexpectedly found it again.

But it was not so with Hope, and Pavlof got many an amazing sight into the sealed book, and learned more of women's ways than most men learn in a lifetime.

For he had his regular duties outside which kept his highest faculties alert and active. And she had too much time for painful thought, and, to a woman of Hope Palma's nature, the very fact of having to live and act so flagrant a lie as circumstances had forced her into, was to her feelings as the rasping of a file on a raw wound.

At times her heart grew sick with the weary indefiniteness of it all. She said to herself that she might wait and wait for ever, and waiting is the hardest work in the world. Then, when the fit was on her, she would break out, as she brooded over the fire of a night--

"Is this to go on for ever? Shall we ever hear from him?"

In their private intercourse she had come to discard the use of any appellation when addressing him. It lent a curtness to her speech which was foreign to her, but he understood her feeling, and suffered it without resentment. Paul Ivanuitch she must not call him, and Serge Petrovitch felt to her each time like a fresh endorsement of the lie that troubled her.

"We shall hear in time, Hope Ivanovna."

"You say it and say it, but shall we?"--defiantly. "Suppose we never hear?"

"Then--but we shall hear, Hope Ivanovna. There has barely been time yet for word to come, even if he got through at once. If I could shorten the time for you I would, but I cannot."

"It breaks my heart to think of him searching and searching and finding nothing, and wondering what has become of me."

"It is very sore for you, but we are doing the only thing possible."

"In the spring I will join a convoy and go back and look for him."

"If you think well," he would answer gloomily. "But where you would look I do not know. He might well be on his way back here in some guise or other, and then you would pass him on the road."

"You do not want me to go," she would fling at him.

"I would give my life to serve you, Hope Ivanovna. But I could not counsel you to go in search of him, for I fear it would be fruitless. He promised to let me know in such a way that no censor could guess what he meant. The moment we hear I will do everything in my power to further your going. Till then you are safest here, and I think Serge would have it so."

At other times she would fall into such a state of dull depression that Pavlof could hardly get a word out of her, and then he went gloomily, and watched anxiously for a recrudescence of the sickness from which she had suffered at Irkutsk. But it was heart-sickness that at such times made the body seem sick, and she would not allow him to doctor her.

And again, in the baffling vagaries of her brooding thought, she would find herself doubting him--him whom her better self knew to be the very soul of honour. And more than once her resentment at this sore bondage of fate showed itself unworthily in words that cut like arrows. It was all his fault. If he had let Serge come on to the mines she would have found him there. It was Pavlof's stupid interference that had set everything wrong and landed them all in this hateful coil.

And Pavlof, if he understood but dimly, trusted much, for he loved much. He suffered acutely because his hands were tied. There was nothing he could do but bear with her always with the utmost gentleness, and that he did.

"It is Hope Ivanovna," he would say to himself. "And she is tried beyond bearing."

He had given his life for her husband's, and she resented it and regarded him as an interferer. It taxed his equanimity to the utmost at times, but never by word or look did he show sign of what was in him, nor did he ever depart by a hair's-breadth from the straight line he had laid down for himself. He kept strictest guard on voice and look, and tuned them delicately to the necessities of the case, and bore with her patiently like the gallant gentleman he was.

But if he never flinched under her flailings, and showed no sign of wound, she knew when her arrows pierced. Then, in due course, she would recognise the wrong she had done him, and the swing of the pendulum would carry her to the other extreme. To salve the wounds she had dealt she would unbend towards him and become sweetness itself. To wipe out the memory of her ungraciousness she would become more than gracious.

And then in turn--and it needed a stout heart and a set jaw at times, for her sweetness was harder to be borne than her undeserved bitterness--it seemed to be he who was cold and hard, and held her at a distance.

But these were her extremes. Between times, and always, except when these gloomy fits mastered her, she was just her own sweet, high-spirited, clear-souled self, deeply interested in all his doings and in the welfare of the community, and life became sweet to Paul Pavlof.

If ever man was tried and tested to his heights and depths, it was Pavlof in this earlier period of their companionship.

To live in such strange case with the one woman who was more to him than all the rest of the world--so close to her--one with her to the general eye--bound, by the exigencies of the case, to tender her before others all those little observances of affection in which his heart would have rejoiced beyond words had they only been real--outwardly, all the happiness he had ever dared to hope for--inwardly, the keen sting of the mockery of it all!

Yes, he suffered much. "Without sorrow no one liveth in love," says old à Kempis. But at the heart of the sting was that keen, deep joy which is the very soul and core of love.

Can one wonder that his thoughts slipped brakes at times and ran wild and free? The wonder would have been if they had not, for after all he was but human.

Suppose no word ever came from Palma?

He had done all he could for his friend. But, at best, his chances were about even. Some indeed escaped. Thousands got away every spring, and blindly prowled the steppes and forests till the winter drove them in again. But the percentage who got clear away to freedom was not large. Still, there was always the chance, and Serge Palma had staked on that chance, and he was a man of intelligence and resource, and would strain every nerve to win through.

And if no word came?

Then--well, it would either mean that he had failed and been recaptured, or that he was dead, which was much the same thing; or--there was the trouble--that the word he had sent had never got through.

He might even then be vainly striving after news of his wife, while she sat here waiting in vain for news of him. And so it might go on, month after month, till Hope grew desperate. Then she would desperately set out to find him, an utterly hopeless task, to search the whole wide world to find one man, and that man as like as not dead.

If no word came, their position would remain just as it was until Hope left him, and was lost to him for ever. While she remained, he felt as a man may feel with whom a priceless gem is left in trust, and lies for safety in his banker's care. He gets no actual good of it. He dare not wear it. He may look at it at times, that is all. But still the knowledge that it is there, and in his charge, gives him a certain glow of satisfaction.

Just so Paul Pavlof carried in his inmost heart the priceless jewel of his love for Hope Palma. She belonged to another, and that other his friend, and so to him she was sacred. But no power on earth could keep him from worshipping her with all the might that was in him.

But, dimly behind all this, lurked two possibilities, either of which might solve the situation.

The one--that Palma, if recaptured, might be sent to the Kara mines--a more than likely possibility. For though the officials, for the benefit of their own pockets, might wink at escapes, recapture entailed severest punishment.

The other--that definite news might reach them, from Serge himself of his escape, or through some of the constantly arriving prisoners that he was dead.

In his capacity of doctor, pending the arrival of a successor to the late official, Paul had access to the prisons, and he questioned all newcomers cautiously for news. But in this the utmost care was necessary, for his position was utterly irregular and in flagrant contravention of all official rules. It was dependent on the caprice of a man who had every reason to regard him as an obstacle in his path. It was only the general fear of a further outbreak of the terrible prison scourge, which permitted him to exercise his profession at all. For typhus is no respecter of uniforms, and when once it got loose there was no knowing where it would stop.

Colonel Zazarin dropped in occasionally to see if Madame Palma was sickening of life at Kara; the gendarmes called at least once every day, as they did at the house of every out-prisoner, to see that they were still there; and of friendlier visitors she had no lack.

But at times Hope Palma's heart grew so weary of this shadowed waiting, that she came to feel, at last, that news of any kind, even the worst, would be better than no news at all.