CHAPTER XXII.
FROM CELLAR TO PALACE.
MEANWHILE Pavel, Mme. Shubeyko, Masha, Mlle. Andronoff and her fiancé, the near-sighted judge with the fluffy hair, went on with their plot. A considerable sum was needed to bribe the warden, the head keeper (a bustling little man who was known in the conspiracy as the Sparrow), and others. The plotters had five thousand rubles, and in order to obtain the rest without delay Pavel went so far as to take his mother into the secret. The countess received his story with a thrill of gratitude and of a sense of adventure. After a visit to the bank, she handed him ten thousand rubles in crisp rainbow-coloured one hundred ruble notes. She was pale with emotion as she did so. Her heart was deeper in his movement than he supposed. It was as if every barrier standing between her and her son had been removed. She was a comrade of his now.
“The only thing that worries me,” she said for something to say, “is uncle’s visits. He has not been here for some time, but if he comes, I shan’t be able to look him in the face. He is a very good man at heart, Pasha.”
“Still, you had better make no haste about trying to convert him,” Pavel answered, with a smile, struggling with the pile of notes.
The bulk of the sum—eight thousand rubles—was to be paid by Mme. Shubeyko to the warden, half of it in advance and the other half upon the carrying out of the project. Rodkevich pretended to receive the four thousand rubles as a loan. He barred all frank discussion of the scheme, hinting that he was scarcely a master in his own prison and that all he could do was to “overlook things under pressure of business at times.” As a matter of fact, he scarcely incurred any risks.
Pavel missed Clara keenly. A feverish yearning feeling had settled in him, often moving him to tears, but he fought it bravely. Once or twice he went to the Beak and indulged in a feast of self-torture, but otherwise he worked literally day and night, seeing people, deliberating, scheming. The only manifestation of his nervousness was an exaggerated air of composure, and as this was lost on his fellow plotters, nothing was farther from their thoughts than that he experienced a sensation as though his heart were withering within his breast and that the cause of it was Clara Yavner.
When he received word of her return he said to himself, in a turmoil of joy, terror and impatience, that he could not bear it any longer and that he would tell her all the next time they were alone.
He saw her the very next day, at the trunk shop. Both blushed violently. The first minutes of their conversation were punctuated with nervous pauses, like the first talk of people who have been reconciled after a long estrangement. He said to himself: “Now is the time,” and vaguely felt confident of success, yet he was still in awe of her and all he managed to do was to turn the conversation upon his mother.