DOOR of his house opened upon the graveled yard of the prison, and Alexander, the son of Nicholas,—Alexander Nicolaievitch,—temporary acting Governor of the Gaol, had no need to go farther than the step to oversee the arrival of the new batch of prisoners as they were herded in under the oil-lamps of the gateway. He had been prepared for them even before the telephone message from the police bureau had warned him that they were to come; for there had been noise in the streets since the morning, and it was a time when those who broke silence in Russia usually broke heads as well.
The lamps in the gateway were bright in the early frost of the evening, and the doorstep upon which the Governor stood was within the circle of their illumination. The prisoners, some thirty of them, collected at a street corner in an indiscriminate charge by the police and soldiers, had a view of him as they were guided into the yard; their restless eyes took him in with the spike-crowned stone walls and all the hard formality of the prison. They saw him as a tall, burly figure in a gray uniform greatcoat, peaked cap, and boots; they had hardly time, perhaps, to note that his beard was as gray as his coat, or that the marks of rank upon his uniform showed that age was coming upon him without promotion. 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. The Governor noted that one of these leaned upon the arm of a friend and sobbed quietly, but without ceasing, her free hand covering her face, while the woman who supported her stood patiently at her side, and let her weep without seeking to suppress her. It was this last upon whom the Governor's gaze dwelt finally—a short, sturdy woman, not much younger than himself, who alone, of that nervous, uneasy throng, seemed entirely at her ease. Her smooth gray hair swept back from a strong, cheerful face, and she looked about her with a quiet watchfulness, as if she were preparing to deal firmly with her environment. There was nothing in her of the strained alertness that characterized the others; she was serene, critical, a figure of force.
"The police will send the papers to-morrow." The sergeant who spoke nodded confidentially at the Governor.
"Very well," he answered. It was a frequent irregularity of those unquiet times, when the mechanism of government was adapted at a moment's notice to new and strange uses. "Take them in," he ordered.
"Forward, there!" shouted the sergeant; and the police began to bustle the prisoners toward the door of the prison building, where, for lack of cells to accommodate them, they were to pass the night in the corridor. The crowd of them, that had come quickly enough through the streets under guard, seemed to discover a reluctance to pass definitely under lock and key; they shuffled and hung back, and the Governor heard their breathing, suddenly harsh and short.
"Get along, there!" shouted the sergeant, in a spasm of peremptory activity. "Drive them in, men. What are you waiting for? In with you!"
He was a gaunt man with high cheek-bones like a Chinaman, and furry red hair under his cap. He thrust roughly among the silent prisoners, and began to shove them forward by ones and twos, making a strange picture of violence by contrast with their unhappy passivity. His men did their part, and the throng of helpless men and women was set moving toward the open door. The weeping woman broke into a wail.
"Here," cried the sergeant, reaching toward her. "If you want to squawl, go and squawl inside!"
He had her by the nape of the neck, and his shove nearly threw her on her face. Only the arm of her companion saved her from a fall. The gray-haired woman steadied her, and looked over her shoulder at the sergeant with a face of grim wrath, and spoke half a dozen words in some crisp tongue that the Governor did not understand.
"On with you!" cried the sergeant, and would have laid hands upon them again. But the Governor, without moving, spoke a single word.
"Halt!" he said.