The trip was devoid of all adventure, however. Even his meeting with his mother was lost on him. He was sincerely contemplating the blind beggar at that moment.
Makar’s landlady was a garrulous Jewess. When she learned that her lodger had been taken ill at the house of a friend and that the workingman had been sent for his things and to pay the bill, she launched out into an effusion of bad Russian that taxed Pavel’s patience sorely. She exacted the address of Makar’s friend, so as to send the patient some of her marvellous preserves. The prince left with the trunk on his shoulder—an excellent contrivance for screening his face from view—but it proved too heavy, and when he came across a truckman who agreed to take him and his load part of the way to his destination he was glad to be relieved of the burden.
While he was in the next room, shedding his disguise, Masha’s aunt bombarded him with impatient shouts and giggles. When he had opened the trunk at last she insisted upon helping him examine its contents, whereupon she handled each article she lifted out as she might a holy relic; and when the trunk proved to contain nothing of a compromising quality even Pavel felt disappointed. Mme. Shubeyko overwhelmed him with questions, one of which was:
“Look here, Boulatoff, why shouldn’t the people rise and put an end to the rule of despotism at once? What on earth are we waiting for?”
“If the people were all like you they would have done so long ago,” he answered, with a hearty laugh. He warmed to her in an amused way and felt like calling her auntie; only that smile of hers continued to annoy him.
CHAPTER XIV.
UNDERGROUND MIROSLAV.
PAVEL dined at the major’s house. He was in high spirits, but the hour of his expected meeting with the girl of the Pievakin demonstration was drawing near, and his impatience was getting keener every minute. He reached the place, a little house occupied by a government clerk named Orlovsky and his mother, ahead of time.