CHAPTER XIX.
STRAWBERRIES.
That walk to the trackman's hut had kindled a new light in Pavel's soul.He often found himself craving for a repetition of the experience--notmerely for Clara's companionship, but for another occasion to walkthrough the fields with her, to sit by her side in the breeze, and,above all, for the intimacy of seeing her fatigued and eating heartily.She dwelt in his mind as a girl comrade, self-possessed and plucky,gifted with grit, tact and spirit; at the same time she lingered in hisconsciousness as a responsive pupil, glowing with restrained enthusiasmover his talk, eagerly following him through an ecstasy of lofty dreams.These two aspects of her were merged in the sight and odour of healthy,magnificently complexioned girlhood between the glint of steel rails andthe dusty geranium in a trackman's window.
They had another appointment. When he called at the trunkmaker's shopClara greeted him with a hearty handshake. He blushed. His love seemedto be gaining on him by leaps and bounds.
"How are things?" he asked.
"First rate, Pavel Vassilyevich. The vegetable man will do it. He's atrump, I tell you." She went into details. She was in unusually goodspirits. They talked business and of the adjustment of things undersocialism. Pavel, too, was in good humour, yet floating in his mind wasthe same old question: And what if all fails and Makar is removed to St.Petersburg?
They met again and again. One day, after they had arrived at certainconclusions regarding Makar, Pavel said:
"Shall we take a walk?"
She nodded assent.
"I am again full of questions."
"Again worrying about the future fate of humanity?"
"Yes, I seem to have no end of questions about it. I wonder whether Ishall remember all those that have occurred to me since I last saw you.I ought to have jotted them down."
"You don't want to pump me dry in one day, do you?"
"Well, if the truth must be told, I rather do. You will soon be leavingus, I suppose, so I am anxious to strike the iron while it is hot."
The personal question as to the length of his stay sent a little wave ofwarmth through his blood. They set out in the direction of thetrackman's hut as a matter of course. Instead of following their formerroute, however, they chose, upon a motion from Clara, who was morefamiliar with these suburbs than Pavel, a meandering, hilly course thatoffered them a far better view as well as greater privacy. A stretch ofrising ground took them to the Beak, a promontory so called for theshape of a cliff growing out of its breast. The common people had somepretty stories to tell of a gigantic bird of which the rocky beak was apart and whose petrified body was now asleep in the bosom of the hillthat had once been its nest.
Pavel and Clara sat down to rest on the freshly carpeted slope. The townclustered before them in a huddle of red, white, green and grey, shotwith the glitter of a golden-domed cathedral, the river flashing at oneend like the fragment of an immense sabre. It was warm and quiet. Therewas not a human soul for a considerable distance around. Now and againthe breeze would gently stir the weeds and the wild-flowers, lingeringjust long enough to scent the hillside with pine odours and thenwithdrawing, on tiptoe, as it were, like a thoughtful friend taking carethat the two young people were kept supplied with the bracing aromawithout being disturbed more than was necessary. Once or twice Claraheld out her chin, sniffing the enchanted air.
"Isn't it delightful!" she said.
"It's a specimen of what life under Society of the Future will feellike," Pavel jested, with a wistful smile.
At one point when she addressed him as Pavel Vassilyevich, as sheusually did, he was tempted to ask her to dispense with his patronymic.In the light of the hearty simplicity of manners which prevailed in therevolutionary movement they were well enough acquainted to address eachother by their first names only. Yet when he was about to propose thechange the courage failed him to do so. Whereupon he said to himself,with a deep inward blushing, that the cause of this hesitancy andconfusion of his was no secret to him.
"Hello there! A strawberry!" she called out, with a childish glee whichhe had not yet seen in her. And flinging herself forward she reached outher white girlish hand toward a spot of vivid red. The berry, of thattiny oblong delicious variety one saucerful of which would be enough tofill a fair-sized room with fragrance, lay ensconced in a bed of sun-litleaves--a pearl of succulent, flaming colour in a setting of greengold.
"Oh, I haven't the heart to pick it," she said, staying her hand andcooing to the strawberry as she would to a baby: "Won't touch you, berrydarling. Won't touch you, sweetie."
"Spare its life then," he answered, "I'll see if I can't find others."
And sure enough, after some seeking and peeping and climbing, Pavel cameupon a spot that was fairly jewelled with strawberries.
"Quite a haul," he shouted down.
She joined him and they went on picking together, each with a thistleleaf for a saucer.
"Why, it's literally teeming with them," she said, in a preoccupiedvoice, deeply absorbed in her work. "One, two, three, and four,and--seven; why, bless me,--and eight and nine. What a pity we havenothing with us. We could get enough to treat the crowd at Orlovsky's."
Pavel made no reply. Whenever he came across a berry that lookedparticularly tempting he would offer it to her silently and resume hiswork. He was oppressively aware of his embarrassment in her presence andthe consciousness of it made him feel all the more so. He was distinctlyconscious of a sensation of unrest, both stimulating and numbing, whichhad settled in him since he made her acquaintance. It was at oncetorture and joy, yet when he asked himself which of the two it was, itseemed to be neither the one nor the other. Her absence was darkness;her presence was light, but pain and pleasure mingled in both. It madehim feel like a wounded bird, like a mutely suffering child. At thismoment it blent with the flavour and ruddiness of the berries they wereboth picking, with the pine-breeze that was waiting on them, with thesubdued lyrics of spring.
And he knew that he was in love.
He had never been touched by more than a first timid whisper of thatfeeling before. It was Sophia, the daughter of the former governor ofSt. Petersburg, whose image had formerly--quite recently, infact--invaded his soul. He had learned immediately that she belonged toZachar and his dawning love had been frightened away. Otherwise his lifeduring these five years had been one continuous infatuation of quiteanother kind--the infatuation of moral awakening, of a politicalreligion, of the battlefield.
From the Beak they proceeded by the railroad track, now walking over thecross-ties, now balancing along the polished top of one rail. She wasmostly ahead of him, he following her with melting heart. By the timethey reached the trackman's place, the shadows had grown long andsolemn. Pavel had no appetite. He ate because Clara did. "Here I amwatching her eat again," he thought. But the spectacle was devoid of theinterest he had expected to find in it.
Nevertheless the next morning, upon waking, it burst upon him once morethat seated within him was something which had not been there about amonth ago. When he reflected that he had no appointment with Clara forthese two days, that disquieting force which was both delicious andtantalising, the force which enlivened and palsied at once, swelled inhis throat like a malady. But no, far from having such a bodily quality,it had spiritualised his whole being. He seemed unreal to himself, whilethe outside world appeared to him strangely remote, agonisinglybeautiful, and agonisingly sad--a heart-rending elegy on an unknowntheme. The disquieting feeling clamoured for the girl's presence--for avisit to the scene of their yesterday's berry-picking, at least. Hestruggled, but he had to submit.
To the Beak, then, he betook himself, and for an hour he lay on thegrass, brooding. Everything around him was in a subdued agitation oflonging. The welter of gold-cups and clover; the breeze, the fragranceand the droning of a nearby grasshopper; the sky overhead and the townat his feet--all was dreaming of Clara, yearning for Clara, sighing forClara. Seen in profile the grass and the wild-flowers acquired a newcharm. When he
lay at full length gazing up, the sky seemed perfectlyflat, like a vast blue ceiling, and the light thin wisps of pearl lookedlike painted cloudlets upon that ceiling. There were moments in thisreverie of his when the Will of the People was an echo from a dim past,when the world's whole struggle, whether for good or for evil, was anodd, incomprehensible performance. But then there were others wheneverything was listening for the sound of a heavenly bugle-call; whenall nature was thirsting for noble deeds and the very stridulation ofthe grasshopper was part of a vast ecstasy.
"That won't do," he said in his heart. "I am making a perfect fool ofmyself, and it may cost us Makar's freedom." As he pictured the Janitor,Zachar and his other comrades, and what they would say, if they knew ofhis present frame of mind, he sprang to his feet in a fury ofdetermination. "I must get that idiot out of the confounded hole he puthimself into and get back to work in St. Petersburg. This girl is notgoing to stand in my way any longer." He felt like smashing palaces andfortresses. But whatever he was going to do in his freedom from Clara,Clara was invariably a looker-on. When he staked his life to liberateMakar she was going to be present; after the final blow had been struckat despotism, she would read in the newspapers of his prominent part inthe fight.
The next time he saw her he felt completely in her power.
Clara was in a hurry, but an hour after they had parted he found anhonest excuse for seeing her again that very day. The appointment wasmade through Mme. Shubeyko, and in the afternoon he called at the trunkshop once more.
"We have been ignoring a very important point, Clara Rodionovna," hesaid solicitously. "Since the explosion at the Winter Palace the spieshave been turning St. Petersburg upside down. They literally don't leavea stone unturned. Now, Makar went away before the examinations at theMedical Academy and he disappeared from his lodgings without filingnotice of removal at the police station."
"And if they become curious about his whereabouts the name of theMiroslav Province in his papers may put the authorities in mind of theirMiroslav prisoner," Clara put in, with quick intelligence.
He nodded gloomily and both grew thoughtful.
"They would first send word to Zorki, his native town, though," Pavelthen said, "to have his people questioned, and I shouldn't be surprisedif they brought his father over here to be confronted with him."
"That would be the end of it," Clara remarked, in dismay.
The next day Pavel telegraphed it all over to Makar, by means of hishandkerchief, from the hill which commanded the prisoner's window.
"I have a scheme," Makar's handkerchief flashed back.
"For God's sake don't run away with yourself," Pavel returned. "It's aserious matter. Consider it maturely."
"Do you know anybody in Paris or any other foreign city you could writeto at once?"
"I do. Why?" Pavel replied.
"Get me some foreign paper. I shall write two letters, one to my fatherand one to my wife, both dated at that place. If these letters were sentthere and that man then sent them to my people at Zorki, it would mean Iam in Paris. Understand?"
"I do. You are crazy."
"Why? Father will let bygones be bygones. I should tell him the wholetruth. He is all right."
"He won't fool the gendarmes."
"He will!" the white speck behind the iron bars flicked out vehemently."He'll do it. Provided he is prepared for it."
"You are impossible. If an order came from St. Petersburg your Zorkigendarmes would not dare think for themselves. They would just hustlehim off to Miroslav."
"Then get father away from there."
"They would take your wife, anybody who could identify you."
"Father is better after all. He would look me in the face and say hedoes not know me. He could do it."
"And later go to Siberia for it?"
"You are right. But I don't think the order will be to take him here atonce. They'll first examine him there. He'll have a chance to foolthem."
Clara offered to go to Zorki at once, but Makar was for a postponementof her "conspiracy trip." Saturday of Comfort was near at hand, andthen the little Jewish town would be crowded with strangers, so thatMlle. Yavner might come and go without attracting attention even in theevent the local gendarmes had already been put on the case.