Perceval Gibbon

“ With the doctor's help, Varvara made up her six roubles, and had sixty kopecks over—about twenty-five cents. She paid the doctor, and proceeded to lock up what was left in that stern safe-deposit that would yield it up only to persuasion.
"Why!" thought Miss Gregory, aghast with enlightenment, as Varvara replaced the box in its drawer and locked the drawer. "Of course! What a pig I am! It's all she has; it's actually all the poor thing has!" ”

“ How can I tell?" replied Alexander Nicolaievitch.
"Well!" The Chief of Police gave him a sour look. "If there is trouble, you will not gain by it, my friend! Such stupidity! Such imbecility! Such incompetence!"
"I am not very competent at police work," agreed the elder man, returning his look. "It's a dirty trade, and I am a soldier. But I am competent to crop the ears of any man who calls me an imbecile."
The Chief of Police was not immediately ready with a reply to this suggestion, and conversation languished till the appearance of Miss Gregory brought them both to their feet, bowing. ”

“ She could not imagine what made Varvara hesitate; together they had uncovered injuries about the girl's body that made the plainest possible demands for skilled help.
"She—she has no money," remarked Varvara. She sighed, and turned away. "I will send for the doctor," she said.
"Oh, if money is necessary!" said Miss Gregory. She had plenty about her; she was equipped with pockets, like a man. She produced a couple of twenty-five-rouble notes and held them out.
Varvara looked at the long yellow notes curiously.
"That is too much for the doctor," she said. "Much too much! Five will be enough." ”

“ But how is the poor girl?"
"She suffers," Varvara told her. "The doctor has been, but he cannot do much here."
"That reminds me," said Miss Gregory, "I owe you six roubles. We'll have her removed to a hospital to-day. And now I'll get up."
In the salon, it had fallen to Alexander Nicolaievitch to keep the Chief of Police company and render first aid to that official's agitated dignity. He had seen his reception of Miss Gregory's directions to wait, and had wondered at his nervous compliance; his intelligence was not alert in such affairs. ”

“ Then the moving crowd halted and swayed and broke, and there were cries and yelps of fear and anger, as blue-uniformed men with weapons came driving through, striking to right and left of them with the flat of short swords and with the butts of rifles. ”

“ The prisoner who spoke English frowned at the sight, and spoke to her gray-haired friend.
"She is too feeble for all this," he said, in the clear, staccato tones of the educated Russian. He wore the uniform of a university student. "It is not a time for feeble people—no!"
The gray-haired woman was bending over the girl, with her handkerchief in her hand. She stood upright to reply to him.
"No," she agreed thoughtfully. "Feeble people are safe only in strong countries. That's the real trouble here, my friend. ”

“ With more than thirty years of service behind him Alexander Nicolaievitch was still a lieutenant, upon a lieutenant's pay, with no hope even of being confirmed in the post of Governor of the Gaol and so securing a provision for his old age.
From his place on the doorstep, he looked down on the new prisoners with a stolid countenance. The last of them was in, and the warder on duty was closing the big gate behind them with a jar of iron bolts. Most of them were young men of the student and clerk types; but there were also two or three women. ”

“ Miss Gregory gave a terse explanation for translation to the Governor. "And that's not all," she went on, when the student had finished interpreting. "This girl was hit first on the breast—with a gun. She ought to be seen by a doctor at once. I can't open her dress to examine her here, with all these men about. If they mean her to die, she shall die decently. Tell him that, please."
Alexander Nicolaievitch heard this interpreted to him, standing over the group of them massively. Then he put a question.
"He says, can she walk?" explained the student to Miss Gregory. ”

“ That there were also possibilities of danger was a fact Miss Gregory, author of the "Saharan Solitudes," was not likely to take into consideration.
"The most careful man I ever knew," she said once to her brother, when he addressed remonstrances to her on the subject of taking risks out of mere curiosity, "died of chloroform at his dentist's. So what's the use of bothering?"
In her fur cap and short fur-lined coat, she drifted with the crowd—just such a crowd as might gather in an English country town on a holiday evening. It moved aimlessly up and down the chief street ”

“ He had come to report that the prisoners were duly established and their names taken.
"All right," said the Governor.
The sergeant saluted again, but hesitated. He still wore his injured air, as of a man who does his duty under difficulties.
"There is one," he said, "a woman, who says——"
"Yes; what is it?" Alexander Nicolaievitch demanded curtly.
"She says she is English," said the sergeant. "There is a student who interprets for her, and she says that she is English, and that to-morrow we—that is, your Excellency—will have to answer for keeping her in prison. She is very threatening." ”

“ She heard him without attention; her eyes were on the papers before her. They had not been out of debt for twenty years; for even a Russian lieutenant, married and elderly, with no social credit to maintain, must preserve a certain decency of appearance upon a strictly inelastic scale of pay, and juggling with their accounts was one of their chief occupations.
"There's eighty roubles we ought to pay at once," she suggested. "I suppose——"
Alexander Nicolaievitch shook his head. Varvara, his wife, stared at him a moment or two consideringly. ”

“ It was hard to reach it only to lose it, after precarious years in garrisons, with gold braid and authority to decorate their lives, and the mean, pressing every-day lack of money to render it all empty and tasteless. ”

“ He nodded a dismissal, and the sergeant went, glad to take himself beyond the reach of further questions.
Varvara looked up from her calculations.
"If this Englishwoman makes trouble," she said, "they'll sacrifice you."
"Of course they will." agreed her husband, and stooped to raise his cap from the floor. It was time to make his visit to the gaol.
The woman who wept had come to rest at the far end of the corridor. Her gray-haired companion had steered her through the throng of prisoners and made her sit down upon her shawl, with her back against the wall. ”