Chapter Twenty One. Hot Haste across Asia.

I resolved to push forward in all haste and at all hazards. I lost no time.

With only forty-eight hours’ stay at the wretched Hotel Million in Tomsk we went forth again, our faces set ever eastward on that wide, straight road which first runs direct for a hundred miles to Marinsk, a poor, log-built place with a dirty verminous post-station and an old postmaster who, when I presented my Imperial permit, sank upon his knees before me. Fortunately the mail was two days behind me, hence, at every stancia I was able to obtain the best horses, though it seemed part of Vasilli’s creed to curse and grumble at everything.

With the snow falling continuously our journey was not so rapid as it had been to Tomsk. Winter had now set in with a vengeance, although it still wanted a few days to the English Christmas. Yet the journey from Marinsk to Krasnoyarsk, two hundred miles, was one of wondrous beauty. It was cold, horribly cold. Often I sat beside the sleepy Petrakoff cramped and shivering, even in my furs.

But those deep, dark woods, with their little glimpses of blue sky; the dashing and jingling along under the low-reaching arms of the evergreen trees, league after league of the forest bowed down to the very earth and in places prostrated with its white weight of snow, the weird ride over hill and mountain, skirting ravine and precipice, the breaks along and across the numerous watercourses, over rude bridges or along deep gullies where rough wooden guards protect the sleds from disaster—with this quick succession of scenery, wild and strange, was I kept constantly awake and charmed.

At the stancias we met the travelling merchants from the Far East and from China with their long train of goods hauled in sleds or packed on the backs of horses. Five pood, we found, was the regulation load, and all packages were put up in drums bound with raw hide and so strapped that they could easily be transported by the pack-horse, which carried half a load on either side of a saddle-tree prepared for the purpose.

But those stancias were filthy, overcrowded, evil-smelling places, wherein one laid in one’s sleeping-bags upon a bench amid a crowd of unwashed, vodka-drinking humanity in damp, noxious sheep-skins.

Fortunately the moon was at that moment nearly full, and often at night I went forth alone to smoke, sometimes with the snowy plain stretched on every hand about me, and at others with gigantic peaks lifting their hoary heads far into the blue night vault of heaven; silent, frigid, white. Ah! what grandeur! I rejoiced that it was night, when I could smoke and ponder. So cold and still was it that those snowy summits, bathed in the silver radiance of the Siberian moon, filled me with awe such as I had never before experienced.

Yes, those were wonderful nights which will live for ever in my memory—nights when my thoughts wandered far away to the gay promenade at Hove, wondering how fared the little madcap, and whether her peril were real or only imaginary.

Ever obsessed by the knowledge that Markoff was aware of my journey, and would endeavour to prevent its successful issue, I existed in constant anxiety and dread lest some prearranged disaster might befall Madame de Rosen ere I could reach her.

Siberia is, alas! the country where, as the exiles say: “God is nigh, and the Tzar is far away.”

Thus, after three weeks more of hard travelling, I passed through the big, straggling, snow-covered town of Krasnoyarsk, and arrived at the wretchedly dirty stancia of Tulunovsk, where the road to Yakutsk—distant nearly two thousand miles—branches to the north from the Great Post Road, up the desolate valley of the Lena.

We arrived in Tulunovsk in the afternoon, and, having sent a telegram to Her Highness from Krasnoyarsk, eight days before, I was delighted to receive a charming little message assuring me that she was quite well and wishing me a continuance of good fortune on my journey.

Since I had left Tomsk no traveller had overtaken me. At Tulunovsk we found a party of politicals, about sixty men and women, in the roughly-constructed prison rest-house, being permitted a few days’ respite upon their long and weary march.

Already they had been six months on the road, and were in a terrible condition, almost in rags, and most of them so weak that death would no doubt have been welcome.

And these poor creatures were nearly all of them victims of the bogus plots of His Excellency General Markoff.

To the Cossack captain in charge of the convoy I made myself known, and after taking tea with him I was permitted to go among the party and chat with them.

One tall, thin-faced man, whose hair was prematurely grey, begged me to send a message back to his wife in Tver. He spoke French well, and told me his name was Epatchieff, and that he had been a doctor in practice in the town of Tver, between Moscow and Petersburg.

“I am entirely ignorant of the reason I was arrested, m’sieur,” he declared, hitching his ragged coat about him. “I have not committed any crime, or even belonged to any secret society. Perhaps the only offence was my marrying the woman I loved. Who knows?” and the sad-eyed man, whose life held more of sorrow in it than most men, went on to say:

“I had been attending the little daughter of the local chief of the police for a week, but she had recovered so far that I did not consider a further visit was necessary. One morning, six months ago, I was surprised to receive a visit from the police officer’s Cossack, who demanded my presence at once at the house of his master, as the child had been seized with another attack. I told him I would go after breakfast as the matter was serious. But the Cossack insisted that I should go at once, so I agreed and went forth. Outside, the Cossack told me that I must first go to the police office, and, of course, I went wonderingly, never dreaming for a moment that anything was wrong. So I was ushered into the office, where the chief of police told me that I was a prisoner. ‘A body of exiles are ready to start for Siberia,’ said the heartless brute, ‘and you will go with them.’ I laughed—it was a good joke, but the chief of police assured me that it was a solemn fact. I was completely dumbfounded. I begged for a delay in my transportation. Why was I deprived of my liberty? Who was my accuser? What was the accusation? But I got no answer save ‘administrative order.’

“I begged to be allowed to revisit my house under guard, to procure necessary articles of clothing—to say farewell to my young wife. But the scoundrel denied me everything. I waited in anguish, but they placed me in solitary confinement to await the departure of the convoy, and in six hours I was on my way here—to this living tomb!”

Of course the poor fellow was half crazed. What would become of his young wife—what would she think of him? A thousand thoughts and suspicions racked his mind, and he had already lived through an age of torture, as his whitening head plainly showed.

At my suggestion he wrote a letter to his wife informing her of his fate, and using my authority as guest of His Imperial Majesty I took it, and, in due course, posted it back to Russia.

Not until three years afterwards did I learn the tragic sequel. The poor young lady received my letter, and as quickly as she could set out to join him in his exile. With womanly wit she managed to apprise him of her coming and a light broke in upon his grief. He had been sent to Irkutsk, and daily, hourly he looked and longed for her. Yet just as he knew she must arrive, he was suddenly sent far away to the most northerly Arctic settlement of Sredne Kolimsk.

The poor young lady, filled with sweet sympathy and expectation, hoping to find him in Irkutsk, arrived there a fortnight too late. Imagine her anguish when, having travelled over four thousand miles of the worst country on the fact; of the world, she learned the cruel news. Still three thousand miles distant! But she set out to find him. Alas! however, it was too much for her. She lost her reason, raved for a little while under restraint and died at the roadside.

Is it any wonder that there were in Russia real revolutionists, revolting not against their Tzar, but against the inhuman system of the camarilla?

Petrakoff and I spent a sleepless night in that rat-eaten post-house where the food was bad, and our beds consisted only of a wooden bench. We had as companions half a dozen drivers, who had come with a big tea-caravan from China, ragged, unwashed, uncouth fellows in evil-smelling furs.

Indeed the air was so thick and intolerable that at two o’clock in the morning I took my sleeping-bag outside and lay in the sled, in preference to staying in that vermin-infested hut.

Next morning, the twenty-second of January, I signed the postmaster’s book as soon as it grew light, and with three fresh horses approved of by Vasilli, we were away, leaving the Great Post Road and striking north along the Lena.

From that moment we entered an uninhabited country, the snowy dreariness of which was indescribable, and as day succeeded day and we pushed further north the climate became more rigorous, until it was no unusual thing to have great icicles hanging from one’s moustache.

One day, a week after leaving Tulunovsk, we passed through an entirely deserted village of low-built huts. I asked Vasilli the reason that no one lived there.

“This is a bad place, Excellency,” was the fellow’s reply. “All the people died of smallpox six months ago.”

And so we went on and on, and ever onward. Sometimes we would travel the whole twenty-four hours rather than rest in those horrible post-houses, and on such journeys we often covered one hundred and twenty to one hundred and forty versts, changing horses every twenty to thirty versts.

We covered seven hundred and fifty miles to Dubrovsk in sixteen days, and here, at the post-house, we met a party of Cossacks coming south after taking a convoy of prisoners to Olekminsk—half-way between Dubrovsk and Yakutsk—and handing them over to the guard sent south to meet them.

While taking our evening tea I chatted with the Cossack captain, a big, muscular giant in knee-boots who sat with his legs outstretched on the dirty floor, leaning his back against the high brick stove.

I was making inquiries regarding the prisoners he had recently brought up, whereupon he said:

“They were a batch of politicals from Tomsk. Poor devils, they’ve been sent to Parotovsk—and there’s smallpox there. I suppose General Tschernaieff has sent them there on purpose that they shall become infected and die. Politicals are often sent into an infected settlement.”

“To Parotovsk!” I gasped, for it suddenly occurred to me that the woman of whom I was in search might be of that party!

And then I breathlessly inquired if Madame de Rosen, Political Number 14956, had been with them.

“She and her daughter were ill, and were allowed a sled,” I added.

“There were two ladies, Excellency, mother and daughter. One was about forty, and the other about eighteen. They came from Petersburg, and were, I believe, well connected and moved in the best society.”

“You do not know their names?” I asked anxiously.

“Unfortunately, no,” was his reply. “Only the numbers. I believe the lady’s number was that which you mentioned. She was registered, however, as a dangerous person.”

“No doubt the same!” I cried. “How is she?”

“When they left Olekminsk she was very weak and ill,” he replied. “Indeed, I recollect remarking to my lieutenant that I feared she would never reach Yakutsk.”

“How far are they ahead of us?” I inquired eagerly. The bearded man reflected for some minutes, making mental calculations. “They left Olekminsk a fortnight ago, therefore by this they should be nearing Yakutsk.”

“And how long will it take me to reach Yakutsk?” I asked.

He again made a calculation and at last replied:

“By travelling hard, Excellency, you should reach Yakutsk, I think, in twenty-five to twenty-seven days. It would be impossible before, I fear, owing to the heavy snowdrifts and the bad state of the roads.”

“Twenty-seven days!” I echoed. “And before I can reach there the ladies will already be inmates of that infected settlement of Parotovsk—the place to which they have been sent to sicken and die!”

“She was marked as ‘dangerous,’ Excellency. She would therefore be sent north at once, without a doubt. Persons marked as ‘dangerous’ are never permitted to remain in Yakutsk.”

Could I reach her in time? Could I save her?