“I don’t think they are. Mme. Shubeyko and the Sparrow are the only ones who know all about it. As to Rodkevitch, he understands it all, of course, but he pretends not to. The Sparrow has his ‘bosom friend’ among the keepers, but that man does not know anything about me. I am quite sure of it.”
“The fewer who know what you are doing there the better, of course. Don’t be foolhardy, my charming one. Oh, I do wish it was all over. Mother wants you to go to the country with her, and I should join you two for some time.”
With a passionate handshake they parted, Clara directing her steps to the prison building. The tremulous solicitude of his warning, his tender concern for her safety left a glow of happiness and devotion in her. She visioned him with his pistol and dagger and her heart was crushed with anxiety. With his hot-blooded temerity he was apt to act rashly, to use violence and stake his own life and Makar’s before it was necessary. Pavel’s mode of taking away the prisoner had never appealed to her strongly, and now the idea was growing on her of stealing a march on Pavel, of bringing about Makar’s liberation when her lover was not on hand. And the more she thought of thus repaying his loving care for herself the keener became her joy in the plan.
Still, the general situation looked so discouraging, that with all her thrills of amorous delight, she was in a state of black despair. The truth of the matter was that the provision man, who was eager to earn a few hundred rubles and to be plucky, had proved to be a most unreliable, boastful coward. Clara was cudgelling her brain for some new scheme, for some new line of action, when an important suggestion came from an unforeseen quarter. Mme. Shubeyko arrived at the prison, all in a flutter with a discovery: Father Michail, the prison priest, bore considerable resemblance to Makar.
“That’s so, but what of it?” Clara said between irritation and agreeable surprise.
“What of it! Why,—I have thought it all out, you may be sure of that. It all occurred to me only an hour ago. Even less,” she said with that silly smile of hers which usually so annoyed Pavel and which at this moment exasperated Clara even more than it would her quick-tempered lover.
“What did occur to you?” Clara asked, with the least bit of venom on the “did.”
Mme. Shubeyko started to explain, but her listener divined the rest herself: Makar might pass out in the disguise of a priest, while Father Michail was with the prisoners.
“It’s an excellent idea!” she murmured gravely. She could scarcely bring herself to believe that the plan had emanated from an absurd brain like that of the woman before her.
“Someone could detain Father Michail until it was all safely over,” Mme. Shubeyko went on. “He’s awfully fond of card-playing, and if a pretty young lady like yourself was his partner he would never have the heart to get up from the table, I know he wouldn’t.”