"St. Petersburg," announced the toneless voice, "Moscow, and the farce of a trial. The waving of a white-gloved hand, and a courtly bow, to dismiss me into pain and darkness and to a living grave. Nijni-Novgorod, and Mother Volga, who takes us convicts to her breast."
Here came the dry chanting of a weird song which made the listener's flesh creep, and her guilty soul quail. Then again, slowly, wearily, Demetrius began to name the stations of his cross on the way to the calvary of a final prison. "Kazan, Pianybor, Perm, the bleak Urals, that prison wall of the exile; Ekaterinburg, Tiumen, the doorstep to the barren cell. Borka, Dobrouna, Oshalka"--the rough Russian names grated on Leah's ears;--"Yevlevoi and the slow-flowing river, the prison barge, the black bread, the bitter, biting, burning cold; Tobolsk, with its deathly mists and clammy darkness of Egypt; the Charity Song--the weary, weary Miloserdnaya!" He sang another line or two in a cracked voice, and broke out more humanly: "Then the warm sunshine like the smile of the good God, and days of those gentle winds we shall never breathe more. The flowers and the winds, the sunshine and the laughing children. Samarof, Sourgout, Narym;" he paused to gather strength for the crying of a name which issued with a sob of heartfelt agony: "Tomsk--oh, Tomsk! Those long, long days of waiting for what was to be; the horrible mercies of the unjust. Kyrie eleison! Christe eleison! Kyrie eleison!" She saw the convulsive movements of the blankets, and knew that he was making the sign of the cross. After the crying to God and His Son came the protest against the cruelty of man. "The weary prison of Tomsk; the road--the long, horrible road to the ice-bound coast. Sakhalin, the island of pain, the hell of the innocent, and a human soul lost. Christe eleison! A loving, sinning soul for which Thou didst die, lost--lost--lost!"
Leah's nerves ached and shook and shuddered as the account of the vile journey welled forth smoothly like thick oil. With fixed eyes and fascinated ears she took in the terrible Odyssey. After another sobbing pause--the broken creature was crying bitterly--the voice recommenced, droning on one note until Leah felt that she could have screamed if only to vary the sound.
Demetrius spoke of the barren wastes of Sakhalin in the Gulf of Ochotsk, where the freezing straits of Neviski run between mainland and island. He told of obdurate Cossacks, of cruel gaolers, of the treacherous Gilyak natives, who prevent the escape of the mortal damned. A note of emotion crept into the voice, and in its level tones she discerned a faint hope. A smuggled letter, and the assurance that help was at hand; a corrupted warder, a bribed soldier, a black starless night, and a desperate escape over deserts of snow. Then came heart-rending relations of a drifting boat, of suffering and starvation and cold which burnt to the bone. Leah heard of a brave woman--"my love--my love," said the voice tenderly--toiling with a bought Japanese fisherman to bring the tiny shallop to a haven beyond the grip of the merciless Muscovite. The weird tale took her through La Perouse Straits, northward amongst the Kurile Islands, and into the naked lands of Kamchatka. Here again, as she gathered, the fugitives were in danger of recapture; but they fled still further north through the bitter cold, and under a bleak sunless sky, to herd with the Koriaks. The tormented voice droned ever on about these filthy savages, fish-eaters, and hunters of the unclean; it shuddered through accounts of loathsome diseases, and of smoky defiled huts like the hells of Swedenborg. And the man wailed always, ever and again, of the danger of being retaken, of terrible suspense, of shattered nerves, and of the eternal strength of a pure woman's love. The tale ended with painful outbursts of joy at the sight of Strange's tramp standing towards the inhospitable Siberian coast.
"Peace, plenty, warmth, food, safety, kindness, hope, love!" chanted the voice, broken up into almost musical gratitude. Then a pause of infinite meaning, ended by a dry clucking chuckle. "And I lived that I might see you," breathed the man she had cast into the hell he had described. Leah's hair bristled at the roots. The speech was so terribly significant. But her soul still fought against the inevitable punishment, whatever that might be.
"Not my fault," she panted eagerly; "horrible, horrible--but not my fault! Oh, believe--believe me, Constantine."
"You have asserted your innocence before," murmured the sick man, ironically; "and now----"
"Now?" her heart almost stood still, so intensely did she listen.
"We must part for ever."
"But you--you----"