Chapter XXIV

The only window in Jeff’s cell was but a small, barred aperture higher than his head, and only a glimmer of the dying day came into it. Its walls and floor were of stone, and by straining into the dusk, Jeff could see the one article of furnishing that the cell contained: a wooden cot on which lay two fur robes. It was evident, then, that here was a perfect refuge for one who wished to give himself to meditation.

There was little to distract the mind. The gloom itself was restful, provided one did not strain to penetrate it, an annoyance easily avoided by the simple expedient of closing one’s eyes. It tended toward perfect concentration on the part of the thinker. The four walls offered no great diversion, and indeed were so empty and cold and gray that they suggested man’s only possible image of infinity; and this, like a rare drug, dulled certain areas of the mind to the excitation of certain others. It was as if Jeff were alone in an otherwise-empty universe, with an infinity of space forever about him: a place of poetic retribution for men who know no better than to think. Here, as in Jeff’s cell, they could think eternally in peace. The one piece of furniture in the room was not ornate enough to hold his fancy for very long, and he had firm scruples against devoting too much attention to the fur robes which covered it. They might succeed in distracting him from anything he should set his mind to.

His arms were still chained; and perhaps this fact aided him to concentrate. As he could only move them a few inches apart there was nothing he could do with them to divert his attention from his one simple theme, which now held him like an iron chain itself.

This theme concerned a certain abstract thing that he had heard of all his life, but which he had never given a moment’s sober thought. The name of that thing was Liberty—a name he had heard so many times it actually had begun to lack meaning for him. Now he thought of it, he could not remember that he had ever known its real meaning.

He had heard it said, times beyond counting, that he and his friends had fought for the liberty of the South. He knew that part of the ardor that sent the Union arms into the field was a desire to liberate the slaves. In addition to this, he had fought because the National Government threatened institutions which he loved and believed in; and his foes had fought to uphold a union in which he had lost faith. There was, indeed, a great deal of talk about liberty lately; and all the time he had not known what it meant.

He had been taught to believe, before ever the Civil War shook the land, that America was the “Land of Liberty,” and when he had come to hate the institution of America, he had someway lost faith in the liberty which was its watch cry. He had thought it an empty name. He had secretly concluded that it didn’t matter; at least his attitude tended to show that conclusion. When some of his comrades-at-arms had tried once more to reconcile themselves to the United States Government—believing that it had qualities worth their loyalty, since it had been decreed they could not have a government of their own, exactly as they wanted it—he had decided to vacate America for good. There had been nothing here worth holding him. He had concluded that the Republican idea—which is only another way of saying the Liberty idea—was not worth retaining. In other words, this thing they called Liberty was not worth staying for.

No wonder, as he sat on the floor in the darkness, his arms confined, that his mind was so busy he was almost unaware of the passing of time.

Jeff Sharp felt that perhaps it would have been better to have done this thinking quite a long time before.

Before he had half exhausted the topic, there came an interruption; and at first he was inclined to resent it. It turned out, however, that the ensuing talk threw even further light on this subject which now had become so interesting to him. He had a visitor in the person of the nobleman Staritsa, and the latter, admitted by the lone guard who stayed in quarters just outside the building, came and talked to him through the barred cell door.

In the end Jeff was actually grateful for the conversation, although he was inclined to doubt if it were aimed to please.

“You look very pretty in there,” Staritsa told him, frankly complimentary. Staritsa had been imbibing freely of the Russian national drink, doubtless to drown his sorrow for his friend’s injury, and now a pleasant recklessness was upon him. Dusky though the corridor was, his eyes glowed, and sometimes his white teeth caught the light. “Why do you hold your hands in such a fond way? Have you forgotten the Christian teaching, ‘Let not thy right hand know what thy left hand doeth?’ Here you sit with them within an inch or so of each other. I fear, Mr. Sharp, that position might prove awkward if you tried to duplicate this morning’s feat. You were most clever—to spike Baron Karl’s guns.”

Jeff looked up, but no anger was in his eyes, and he was merely interested in what Staritsa would tell him next. He felt that he would like to draw further confidences from the young noble. “They are somewhat awkward this way, I fear,” he observed carelessly, “yet I think I could pick up a dog—not an honest dog, but a cur, a fawning, treacherous wolf whelp—such a dog I could pick up by the scruff of the neck and beat out his brains against these bars. If you care to ask the jailer to let you in—”

Staritsa tried to laugh; but it is part of the curse that lies upon such men that laughter is forbidden. He could only make mirthless sounds, mostly in profane Russian—a tongue that lends itself to the most unspeakable profanity. “_That_ will be added to the rest that we owe you,” Staritsa said, when he could think again in English. “You were clever to change the guns, Sharp, but I don’t think you will be successful in changing the whips. We have had one kind for many centuries, and although we love to comply with a great American’s wish, I fear we will be unable to change it for any other. You will get to know all its fine points—over there.”

He jerked his hand toward the west.

“Over there, of course,” Jeff agreed, smiling. “If I am sent there—there will only be more dogs to kill when the final settlement is made.”

“My friend, no one will ever know where you are.” Staritsa’s tone was serious now; evidently the system he was about to describe moved him to the most fervent admiration. “Perhaps you noticed—to-day—the _Neva II_, lying in the harbor. Perhaps you did not know she is sailing to-night, out west. She will have aboard her certain exiles for the prisons—out there where the sun sets—or rather where it never rises. Certain native thieves, a murderer or two—and perhaps a few others.

“The warrant arresting you to-day said that you were to have a trial; Baron Karl never made a better joke. Injured though he is, he ordered that warrant. Little brother, you have already had your trial. You have already been sentenced. All that remains now—is to give you your number.”

“So I am to sail to-night, am I?” Jeff asked. His voice trembled ever so slightly, and Staritsa rejoiced to listen.

“All track of you will be lost. When you lie buried, you will also wear a number—but that time will not be soon. Oh, not at all soon. There will be years and years. The life out there is very healthy, so they tell me.

“Soon the American Government will start inquiries as to what has happened to the Special Correspondent. They will write to the Czar, and the Czar will not know. Believe me, I am telling the truth; the Czar will not know. There are many things that he does not know. He will be greatly disturbed, but he will not find you. He can not disbelieve the account that will be sent out, and your President will not disbelieve it either. Oh, such a regrettable incident: that Jeff Sharp, summoned before the commissioner for a talk concerning a duel in which he became engaged, disappeared into the forest, evidently afraid for his life, and can not be found! Oh, it will be a great shame—try hard as we could, he could not be found. Of course no one will think of looking Out There. If they did look, after certain years, they would never recognize the grand American diplomat. Why, he was tall, beautiful, and proud. That thing? That shrieking, stooped creature, licking the boots of the guard? That broken, detested thing? Why, that is not a man at all!”

Staritsa shook with glee in the corridor. Jeff had never seen such spite as this with which the noble Muscovite described his victim’s fate. Evidently his love for Baron Karl had been an emotion of great power. Besides, the evil jinni that lives in the vodka jar had hold of him and put ideas in his head.

There was no hope, however, that the plan Staritsa had described was but a drunken phantasy. Jeff knew that the _Neva II_ was lying in the harbor, and he knew that she sailed to-night. He was a disillusioned man, at last; and he had abjured false hope for good and all. To-night he was going west.

When the _Neva II_ passed the harbor mouth he might say farewell to American shores—except perhaps dim glimpses from shipboard of the bleak peninsula, like the Siberian shore itself—because he would not come again. Such prisoners as he would be do not return to make trouble. His plan to migrate from America was to be executed.

He would get his wish, after all. He would become the subject of a monarch, rather than one of a governing people. He would spend the rest of his days in a country ruled by a privileged aristocracy, just the sort of a _régime_ he had favored. Fate has queer ways of making one’s dreams come true.

He had renounced America, and some power which lived behind the clouds had taken him at his word. In the long years to come he would have chances in plenty to observe the virtues of an aristocracy over a republic. He would have unparallelled opportunities to observe its fine points, and to admire its system.

In America he had been one of the commonwealth, but he had wished to give over his rights as a citizen to become a vassal of a monarch. He would now get his wish, and it was part of his requital that in surrendering up his title as a freeman, he would also surrender his title as an individual, his name. He would be known by a number from henceforth. But likely he would soon forget his name, anyway. Such a life as would be his in a Siberian prison camp works amazing changes in a man, and particularly it devastates the association areas of the brain. This was apart from the fact that he would be one of an ant hill, in a land whose empty spaces were in themselves enough to despoil a man of his own identity.

Jeff Sharp had drained his cup to its bitter dregs. Now, as if his cup were poison, the stream of his life seemed to have ceased to flow. So silent he stood, seemingly so bereft of all motion that he suggested a wild thing crouching terrified in a woodland covert, who by remaining motionless hopes to escape the searching eyes of a beast of prey; but the cruel beast that hunted Jeff to-night was his own thoughts. He was alone, at last; wholly and terribly alone.

There was no one to go to now. Iron bars stood between. There was no one who could come to him. He had danced, but now the music was still and his companions had gone away, and he was left alone in the silence and the darkness. As far as Jeff dared to dream his game of life had been played—and lost.

If his punishment stopped at this instant, Jeff Sharp had paid in full for all his vanity and folly; yet it had hardly begun. Those who hated him and who wanted to see him fall now had their wish. Here, in the darkness, out of the sight of all men, his proud head was bowed.

He was alone in fact as well as in the lonely sea of his mood; Staritsa had reeled through the corridor and away into the twilight. The dusk deepened, and the black Alaskan night obliterated the last ray that wandered through the window of his cell. Still Jeff stood in one place, and the wheel of his thought was far and wide as the orbit of a star; but the shadows that lay over him were black and chill with never a starry gleam.