CHAPTER VIII

HOW HOPE WRESTLED WITH SATAN AND GOT HER OWN WAY

"It is well with the child, Marya," said Hope Palma, as she rose from her knees by the bedside and kissed the dead face of her three-months old baby.

But Marya Ostronaya wept inconsolably.

"Dear heart!--Matushka! It is no good to weep--he is safely home. He will never know prison cell and chains. He was dearer to me than my life, but I thank God He has taken Him to Himself. And I do not think he suffered, Masha."

"No, he did not suffer. See the smiling face of him," wailed old Marya. "It is the face of an angel from heaven."

"In heaven, Masha, dear, and that is still better. He will have found my father and mother. Ah, how they will welcome him! He is safe. And I am glad."

Her face was thinner than it used to be, chastened to a rarer delicacy by the troubles of the past six months, and the great dark-blue eyes seemed larger by reason of the soft touch of sorrow below them. But the brave true spirit shone through undimmed, seemed even to shine the brighter for the fining and chiselling of its tenement.

Since the day she had, at Serge's earnest persuasion, gone away into the country for the sake of the expected one, troubles had pursued her like a pack of winter wolves. That hasty and, in her condition, recklessly dangerous visit to the city flung her on the rack concerning him. All their efforts after news of Palma beat themselves to pieces against the adamantine silence of the authorities, like spray against a rock.

He had been arrested and carried off by the police--simply that, and nothing more. He had disappeared from human ken, as many another had done before him.

His estate was placed in the hands of an official administrator, pending developments, and his wife was left to get along as best she could. And all this at the time when, of all times in her life, a woman needs every help and consideration that outward circumstance may procure for her.

That the little one, when it came, was weakly, was not to be wondered at. The wonder was that either it or its mother survived so dreadful a time. For three months the tiny life flickered gently in their tender hands and then went quietly out.

It was with a new and deeper reverence that Hope recalled the memory of her own mother, who had suffered in her time as she was suffering now.

She had her father's intrepid spirit, however. Bend she must before the repeated blows, but break she would not, and as soon as her baby was buried she turned everything she possessed into money, and went up to St. Petersburg to prosecute inquiries after her husband.

Wherever he might be she was determined to follow him, if it were humanly possible to do so. It was for love of her that he had been drawn into the net, and her place was by his side. And, moreover, the motives which had in the first place induced her to join her life to his had grown into a close and true affection. He had loved her very warmly, and his nature had deepened and developed by contact with hers. Her marriage had turned out a success, in spite of the fact that she entered into it more from love of duty than for love of the man she married.

The search after news of him was heart-breaking work, however. Post sent her to Pillar, Pillar to Post; an endless round of supercilious insolences and cold evasions. Her patient endurance of the harassments of her quest might have worked upon a flint, but the hearts of the bureaucrats were unmoved.

Her beauty, however, wrought for her where her anxious pleading and visible distress failed. The results of all her inquiries focussed at last upon one, Colonel Zazarin, of the Ministry of the Interior, as the man who could help her in her search if he would. Her patient pertinacity in time procured her an interview with him.

Colonel Zazarin was a man of commanding bodily presence, but his face was predatory, his eyes and mouth lairs of low gods. Hope recoiled from him with the instinct of a dove from a hawk, of a lamb from a wolf, of a pure woman from a foul man.

After a second prolonged stare at her face, the Colonel's haughty rigour abated somewhat. He questioned her at length, promised to look the matter up, and told her to return in three days. When she went back he had more questions to put and told her to call again, and again, and yet again.

She knew he was amusing himself with her, and that he could probably have put his hand on the necessary papers in five minutes at any time, had he chosen to do so. Questions always, endless questions, she might have been a criminal and he the examining magistrate by the number and irrelevancy of his questions, and she found it more and more difficult to retain her equanimity under it all.

Then, to her great annoyance, he took to calling upon her at her apartments, to ask still further questions, and to convey trifling scraps of information which only kept her hungry for more. With all her might she strove to keep her anger down, and to close the eyes and ears of her understanding to the meaning of the Colonel's distasteful attentions.

But it was desperately hard work. It grew beyond her bearing, and at last one day she broke out stormily, "Colonel Zazarin, if you have anything to tell me, tell it me, and let me be gone. If not, pray say so, and I will try elsewhere," and the Colonel gazed at her admiringly.

"Quite so, quite so," he said. "But you are so impetuous"--she had been in St. Petersburg a month, and knew just as much of what she wanted to know most, as on the day she arrived, and of some things much that she would have been glad not to know. "A matter such as this needs time, my dear young lady, time and much careful inquiry. It would not do to make any mistake. Is it your intention to follow your husband--that is, in case we should find that he has been sent away?"

"Certainly I shall follow him. Where should a wife be but with her husband? Where has he been sent?"

"In certain cases condemnation cancels all obligations of the kind," said the Colonel smoothly.

"What do you mean?"

"Supposing, for example, your husband should have been sent to Siberia, the law sets you free. Your husband has no further claim upon you."

"The law, the law!" she fired. "Your law! I hold myself under something higher. If you will not help me----"

"Well, well! I have not said I would not help you----"

"Where have they sent him?"

"----To the Kara mines," said the Colonel at last.

She had feared it and had been prepared for it. Yet Kara was better than the grave. But then she had never been to Kara.

"I shall follow him."

"Have you money?"

"The law--your law has seized my money," she said bitterly. "I must go as I can."

"Will you permit me to----"

"No, no," and she started up in haste. No woman could mistake what that meant.

"Well, well! But you are so impetuous. If you will go you will have to get a permit to travel with a convoy."

"That I have a right to--even by your law."

"Certainly."

"Then I will avail myself of it. To whom shall I apply?"

"I will see to it for you, if you will not permit me to----"

"Where can I get it? How soon can I start?"

"I will find out. Perhaps you can make it convenient to call at my office to-morrow. It is a terrible journey. You have no idea what it means. Months of travel, and at the very worst time of year. Wait, at all events, till the spring."

"I would start this moment if I could. I shall know no rest till I get there."

"Undoubtedly," said the Colonel, who knew a great deal more about it than she did.

By one pretext and another he managed to retard the granting of the permits for nearly two months. Then there were delays upon the road, and a weary wait at Tiumen till the Irtish opened. So that May was well advanced before she found herself at last sitting inside the wire cage of the great convict barge which carried herself and five hundred more into exile, and watched the yellow banks drift by into the past like the lives and hopes they were leaving behind them.