When Clara, in a large shepherdess hat and genteel looking, bade her sister a hurried good-bye and made for the open gate, Ruchele ran after her, yelling so that her mother had to catch her in her arms and carry her gagged indoors. That was the only adventure Clara encountered on her way to the Palace.
Makar was not there.
She told Pavel of the rescue in general outline, explaining that an unexpected opportunity had presented itself and that there had been no time for sending word to him. He flew into a rage. So far from being the central figure in the affair for which he had been priming himself these many weeks he had been left out of it altogether, left out like a ninny caught napping. But this was no time for wounded pride. Clara had unexpectedly become a ne-legalny and—what was of more immediate concern—what had become of Makar?
“I hope he was not taken in the street,” he whispered.
“Masha might know. Could you send Onufri?”
Pavel disliked to use the old hussar for errands of this nature, but in the present juncture there seemed to be no way out of it.
Onufri brought back a note in which the words were all but leaping with excitement.
“No! No! No!” Masha wrote. “He has not been caught. My brother has not yet been home. Everybody is nearly crazy! But I can almost see my brother chuckling—in his heart of course! Hurrah! Hurrah! Long live the revolution!”
“Thank God!” said Clara, shutting her eyes, in a daze of relief.