CHAPTER IV

HOW ONE FOUND HIMSELF IN HADES

This brief record deals with human emotions rather than with a too realistic detail of all the facts which excited them. Yet, since every deliberate act in life is fruit or flower of seedling thought, the planting and growth of these is worthy of observance. It is the sum of the small that makes the large, and a single word may plant the seed which, in its time, blossoms into fragrant action, and alters the courses of lives, and rounds life itself at last into its fullest beauty.

We exercise our privilege, then--more fortunately than those chiefly concerned--and skip twelve dreary months, and pick up the threads once more inside one of the Imperial sheepfolds--the great stockade of the Tomsk convict-forwarding prison, three thousand miles from St. Petersburg, on the banks of muddy Tom.

And if you had happened to be sitting on the ground with your back against one of the wooden houses inside the great stockade that day, this is what you would have seen, just as Paul Pavlof saw it.

Up above, a blue, rain-washed sky, with a clear sun struggling blessedly to warmth; all round, whichever way you looked, the sharp teeth of the high wooden stockade, set in a savage snarl at the world in general, and biting viciously into the soft blue of the sky; many long, rough log houses with grated windows and heavily padlocked doors; a wooden church with pointed spire; black and white sentry boxes every here and there, each with its Imperial watch-dog in the person of a green-coated Cossack, who leaned stolidly on his bayoneted rifle, and in his dull, uninterested regard of his charges, showed plainly that he considered them of a lower breed even than himself.

The ground was churned into mud with the restless tramping to and fro of droves of shaggy, unkempt prisoners in long grey overcoats and flat grey caps. They walked for the most part in silence--a silence that was fretted with the discordant jingling of leg fetters. The sound of chains in connection with one's fellows produces a natural repulsion in most minds, but Pavlof had grown used to it.

He sat on the dryest spot he had been able to find, with his back against the rough logs of the house, and watched his companions with interest, almost with enjoyment. To a starving dog even a sour crust is treasure-trove. When one has been hermetically sealed in a stone cell for many months, the generous freedom of the prison enclosure, its wonderful height from mud to sky, the great stretch that lay between its rows of grinning teeth--why, it was resurrection. And contact with humanity and freedom of intercourse are things to be grateful for. For humanity, even in the dregs, debased, dirty, disgusting in its details at times, is still preferable to the automatic machinery in human form which attends to one's more pressing outward needs, but is deaf and blind and dumb to all else, in the sepulchral silence of the stone bags of Schlusselburg.

A year of close confinement had wrought some changes in Pavlof, though not so great as might have been apparent in a softer-bred man. He was always lean and eager of face, and spare and tall. He looked taller and thinner, and perhaps a trifle leaner of face and more cavernous about the deep-set eyes, and the careless sprawl of his limbs as he sat betokened a certain listlessness even in his novel enjoyment of observation.

He lay watching all that went on around him with the quiet alertness of one deeply interested in his fellows and rejoicing once more in the exercise of faculties long barred. There was a thoughtful keenness in his scrutiny, as though he were endeavouring to weigh each man in his mind and to classify him according to his past. His aspect was that of the student come suddenly into possession of a library bearing specially on his own chosen study.

Not far from him a group of his fellow prisoners was intently wasting its meagre substance by means of a couple of dice, which, for want of a box, they shook in their balled hands. One of them had chains on his wrists as well as on his feet. When his turn came the rhythmic jingle of his fetters was like a ghostly chorus to his play. Their stakes were scraps of food and morsels of brick tea.

A cheerful-looking little man pushing a barrow came along and stood near Pavlof to watch the gaming. He was past middle age and very uncouth and shaggy, but his face was the most cheerful Pavlof had yet seen. When he took off his flat cap Pavlof saw that his head was shaved bare on one side, by which he knew that he was a penal colonist, and the odd little fellow took off his cap and ran his hand over his head every few minutes as though he had not yet got used to that style of hair-cutting. Whenever he moved the barrow, to which he was attached with an iron chain, the wheel squeaked monotonously.

"Ey, ey!" he said, with a knowing shake of the head at Pavlof. "It passes the time, but it's foolishness all the same, for if you lose you starve."

"Yes," nodded Pavlof. "The stakes are bigger than they look. Can't you stop that wheel of yours from squeaking so?"

"No, barin, I can't," said the odd little fellow, with an evident desire to be obliging if he could. "I've given it all the fat I can spare, but it squeaks all the same. The dust and the mud have got into its throat, I expect. So now I eat the fat and let it squeak. You get used to it in time. It's rather a pleasant squeak, don't you think?"

"I've not got used to it yet. How far have you brought it?"

"Over fifteen hundred miles, barin. From down Orenburg way," and the little old man sat down on his barrow quite ready for a chat.

"You must be pretty tired of it by this time."

"Yes, and no, barin. You can get used to any thing in time, and I do believe I'd miss it now if they took it away. It's a bit in the way at nights sometimes, when I forget it's there, but I talk to it as we go along and it always says 'Yes! Yes! Yes!' to everything I say, and that's a change for the better anyway."

"How's that?" asked Pavlof, amused at the old fellow's simple chatter and manner.

"Well, you see, barin, my wife, she used to say 'No! No! No!' to everything I said, and she didn't always stop at that either. No, bless my soul, that she didn't! Now the little barrow never says 'No! No! No!' to me, and it never ups and knocks me down and sits on me."

Here a small girl hugging a little slate-blue cat came up, and leaned on the barrow, and looked up at the little old man and lisped, "Won't you give us a ride, little father?"

"Ey ey! a ride, little Dushenka? Well, well, get in and I'll give you a ride. How's pussy to-day?"

"She doesn't like the mud, little father," and she climbed in, and the old fellow trudged away to an accompaniment of cheery squeaks from the barrow, jingling fetters, and jerky prattle from the little maid.

Presently he was back, panting and more cheerful than ever, and the small girl climbed down, still hugging her cat, and said, "Thank you, little father!" and ran off to a gloomy-faced man who stood waiting for her.

"Ey, ey!" said the little old man, as he and Pavlof watched her grip the gloomy one's hand and go off with him. "His wife died two days ago, and that's all he's got left. Best off here those who have no wives."

"But you are married yourself, from what you were saying," said Pavlof.

"I was, barin. The little barrow is my wife now," and he patted the barrow with genuine affection.

"And why did you marry the barrow?"

"Well, it was this way. My wife--my other wife, you understand--she carried on with another man, and one day I hit him--and so I wear the barrow."

"That seems pretty hard lines--just for hitting a man."

"Oh, well, I don't know--you see, he died, barin."

"And your wife?--your other wife, I mean?"

"She is at rest, barin, God be thanked!--and so am I," and he crossed himself devoutly. "We did not get on very well together, you see, because she always would have her own way, and she was bigger than me. Still, she was my wife, and I could not let another man have her. And so--well, she died too. And on the whole I get on better with the barrow than I did with her. It does what I please and says 'Yes! Yes! Yes!' to all I say, and my wife she used to say 'No! No! No!' and do as she pleased. And besides, I can sit on the barrow. It used to be the other way with my wife."

"And how much farther have you got to take her?"

"Another two thousand miles, barin--all the way to Kara."

"And then? Why, you'll be quite sorry to part with her."

"Oh, we don't part, barin. I keep her as long as I live, they say. I hope she won't get laid up or crippled in any way. I'd never get to like another one as I do this one. Bless my soul! I never thought of that before. Whatever should I do?" and his cheerful little face grew overcast at the bare thought of it.

"You're a very plucky fellow to bear your troubles so lightly," said Pavlof, distinctly cheered by contact with so brave a little soul in so odd a little body and circumstances.

"Oh, I don't know, barin. It's no good grumbling when you can't alter things. Besides, she's useful at times--like this, to sit on. And she carries my pack, and sometimes one of the children, and now and again my neighbour's little dog. Now my other wife would never have done that, you know. She didn't like dogs or children either."

"What's that about my little dog, Gregory Stepanovitch?" asked a tall, lean man, who had strolled up and stood leaning against the house, watching the players and listening to the old fellow's chatter.

"I'm telling the barin he likes to ride in my barrow at times, Mr. Zubof."

"That he does, and to sleep in it too. I only wish it was big enough to hold us all. I slept on the floor last night because we were so crowded, and it was all wet mud and it got into my bones."

"Ah!" said old Gregory with a chuckle, "I sat on my wife all night, alongside your little dog, Mr. Zubof, and my bones are all right. But all the same you don't rest your legs properly when you can't stretch them out."

"And where are you bound for?" asked Pavlof of the newcomer.

"Only to the provinces, barin."

"And why do you take the dog with you? Is he exiled too?"

"He belonged to my little girl," said the lean man gloomily, as he fondled the dog. "She and her mother would come with me, and they took the fever and died. It was just as well, perhaps, for the road is very terrible for women and children. And I couldn't leave him behind, you see. Besides----" and he nodded his long melancholy face knowingly.

"Besides what?"

Zubof glanced round to see if the green-coated watch-dog was within hearing, and then said cautiously, "I shall walk away from wherever they send me, one fine day, and Fifi will be company for me in the woods. He's as sharp as a needle, and it's good to have some one sensible to talk to when you're lonely."

"You hope to escape, then?" said Pavlof with interest, since he too was bound for the provinces.

"Of course. Any one can escape from the provinces. It's just as easy as walking. But that doesn't say it's easy to get back home, you understand. That's quite another thing altogether. But I've no one left at home to go back to. When I get away into the woods I shall just stop there."

"And supposing they catch you?" said Pavlof.

"Why, then, of course, we go to Kara with chains on our legs."

"All the same," said old Gregory, who had been listening open-mouthed to all that passed, "you'll starve in the woods when the snow comes on."

"Oh no, I won't. I've thought of all that."

"Ah well, one doesn't get out of Kara as easily as that, especially with a squeaky little wife tied to your legs," and he patted the barrow consolingly, as though to intimate that no slight was intended and no umbrage must be taken at what was so evidently a fact.

"Out of Kara? I believe you! That's no easy job, though I've done it more than once," said another, who had stopped alongside to see what was going on.

He was a great burly fellow with leg-irons on. His skin, where it was visible, was brown as parchment. His face was covered with a matted growth. He looked as strong as a carthorse.

"And let me tell you," he added, "There are some worse places than Kara. Yakutsk, for instance. Gr-r--r-r!"

"And what is Yakutsk like? Been there?" asked Pavlof.

"Yes, barin. I've been there and nearly stopped there. They call Kara hell, but Yakutsk is a hundred times worse."

"That must be pretty bad," said Pavlof, to draw him on.

"Bad! Well, you see, they're human at Kara, if they are a bit difficult and hard on you. But at Yakutsk they're just simple barbarians--eat raw and sleep cold. Beasts--just beasts, and not fit to live among. I'm rough and strong, and I can stand a good deal, but I can't stand the Yakuts."

"And why did they send you to Yakutsk?"

"Well, it was this way, barin. It was my first time and I was going to the provinces, and there was a barin in our company, just as it might be yourself, and he was bound for Kara. And--well, he was very keen to get back home again, and he got me to change names with him, so that he went to the provinces and I went to Kara. It turned out that he was a red-hot bad lot. He got back home all right enough, but then he was fool enough to get caught again, and then it all came out, and they found they had two of his name on their hands, so they sent us both to Yakutsk to make sure. We got away all right, though it's not easy, for the devils watch you like cats, and--well, it was bad on the road and he died. No, if ever I'm sent back to Yakutsk, I'll die there sooner than try getting out."

"And why did they send you here, Mr. Zubof?" asked Pavlof, of the lean man with the dog.

"I was a schoolmaster," he said bitterly, "and I taught people how to live and grow, and so they plucked me up by the roots and cast me on to the dunghill, and here I am. I never wronged any man, as far as I know. But they have killed my wife and child, and now I have nothing left but Fifi here. And we're going to live in the woods and care for nobody.... I used to believe in God, but I can't fit Him in with these doings."

"These are man's doings," said Pavlof quietly.

"Devil's, barin," said the man who was like a carthorse, very emphatically. "The men are underneath and the devils are all on top. As soon as a man gets an office he becomes a devil."

"We're all just rats in a trap," said the schoolmaster, looking slowly round the great stockade, "and sometimes I wish the trap would snap and chew us all up with its big, black teeth."

"It's swallowed many a thousand," said the man who was like a carthorse, "but it always spits them out again--to Kara, and Nerchinsk, and Yakutsk. And it'll go on swallowing as long as there are any left to swallow. Think not, barin?" at a sign of dissent from Pavlof.

"No, I think not. Sometime the end will come."

"Ah God! That is too good to hope for," said the man who was like a carthorse.