XXIV A NEW TUNE ON AN OLD FIDDLE

PETER stood staring at Katerin, still holding the tiny dagger in his hand. A puzzled look had come into his face, as if he could not understand why she should scream. The mental shock which he had sustained in his discovery that the old man was Michael Kirsakoff, seemed to have closed some compartment of Peter’s consciousness which included Katerin in her relationship to Michael. Now the full fact of her personality intruded itself upon him in relation to what had happened and Peter’s brain needed time to readjust itself to a state of affairs in which Katerin must be considered.

He lifted his empty hand to his face and drew his fingers across his eyes in a motion that suggested brushing something away which interfered with his vision. He threw back his head and shook it slightly, as if to clear his brain of a vapor which befogged it. An infinite weariness gripped him, and his eyes regarded Katerin as if she were some specter which had formed out of thin air and now stood between him and his vengeance, possessed of a supernatural power to thwart him in his desires.

The first of the three to move was Michael. He slumped down into a chair, and, lifting a warning hand to Katerin, said weakly, “He has found us out!”

Her father’s voice seemed to release Katerin from the grip of her terror, and she began to move forward toward Peter, with slow, even steps, her eyes upon the dagger in Peter’s hand. There was no wariness about her, yet she had a quiet deliberation, as if she knew that it would be safer to make no sudden movement and so startle Peter into resistance.

Katerin approached Peter, and reaching for the dagger, put her hand upon its blade and drew it out of his fingers with the same gentle motion that a mother might use in taking a dangerous object from the hand of a child. And Peter relinquished the weapon, not so much in surrender as in a state of mind which was willing to forego for the present anything or any action in exchange for time to consider a new phase of the situation.

Katerin recognized the dagger, more by the quick sidewise glance she gave her father than by looking at the ivory hilt which stuck up between her thumb. She suspected that her father had drawn the weapon against Peter when he had discovered her father’s identity, and that Peter had disarmed him. But she knew that just what had happened during her absence from the room did not matter now—the danger lay before her. She mistrusted Peter’s temporary mood, and sought for an angle by which she might draw from him his attitude, or deflect him from any murderous intent. She knew that her father’s life hung in the balance—and her own—while Peter stood there silently staring at her, grim and forbidding and gathering impetus for whatever form his next impulse would take.

“I trusted you!” she said quietly, and after she had uttered the words her mouth remained half open and her breath came gustily, like the breath of a runner who is spent at the end of an effort. She had been holding her breath since she had screamed in the doorway. She looked into his eyes.

Peter’s lids flickered. His eyes were half closed, and still shot with red in the tiny blood-engorged veins at the sides. He looked at her dreamily, questioningly, and she thought with something of insolent defiance.

Peter did not answer, but he moved his head slightly and looked past her at Michael, lips compressed, and the lids flickering.

“Peter Petrovitch—I love my father.” Her voice was low, entreating, consoling, and carried an infinite desire that he understand her suffering.

“This is the end for us!” piped up Michael shrilly. “To the dead it does not matter how death has come—we shall take the poison!”

Michael lifted one hand before him, and with the other tore open a seam in the cuff of his shirt. Between his thumb and finger appeared a small white pellet.

Katerin was upon him instantly and took away the pellet.

“Not yet—by your own hand,” she said gently, and putting one arm about his neck, bent and kissed him. She turned to Peter once more, her courage stronger, a vague hope growing within her. But her eyes were filled with tears.

“Would you kill my father? Would you do the work of Zorogoff, the Mongol? And see me surrendered to this half-blood Ataman? You! Peter Petrovitch—a Russian—a Russian from America!”

She was not so much asking him these things, as she was asking herself if he could do them. She was not afraid—she was hurt. It all seemed incomprehensible to her—that any Russian could ally himself with Zorogoff, could commit a murder such as he had planned. She understood now that she had not been brave in her dealings with him, but that she had never allowed herself to believe he could be dangerous even though her dexterous manipulation of him were exposed.

“Katerin Stephanovna!” said Peter, gazing at her with a trace of surprised awe in his tone and his look. “You—are Katerin Stephanovna!”

She divined something of what was passing through his mind—he was thinking of her as a little girl, in the old days in Chita. A look of hope flashed across her face, though she took care that she did not betray to him that she saw an advantage.

“I am Katerin Stephanovna,” she said, with a lift of her chin. She stood beside her father, one hand upon his shoulder to restrain him against any action, and yet in a posture which suggested defense.

“The same little girl—who was in the sledge—that morning of the almanacs and——” went on Peter.

Her mind leaped ahead of him as he paused—she knew now that he was mentally reconstructing the scene of his father’s death, and that from it would accrue a new burst of hate, a fresh impetus which might compel him to action against the restraint which her presence had interposed between him and her father. She left her father and moved toward Peter, seeking to distract his thoughts by drawing his attention to her.

“Are you a true Russian?” she demanded passionately, as she approached him. “Are you a man of my race?”

He seemed startled by the question, and once more his hand brushed his brow.

“Russian?” he repeated simply, almost helplessly, as if it were something that it had never occurred to him before to question. He looked down at his uniform, and then lifted a khaki sleeve to study the brown band of tape at the cuff, the band of an officer’s sleeves.

“Why, yes—I am Peter Petrovitch,” he said finally.

He stepped to the window and looked out upon the Sofistkaya, and at the flattened gable-end of the little hut below which had been his and his father’s. Katerin drew close to him, and putting her hand softly upon his arm, looked into his face. Her own was drawn with suffering, and glistened with fresh tears.

“Peter Petrovitch,” she whispered, “you look upon a new Russia—the one you knew has gone. The old prison on the hill is empty! Empty! Thank God for it! What more can you do?”

He looked directly at her, and studied her face for a minute, his own face still reamed with the lines of the hatred which held his nerves taut.

“You trusted me?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“You deceived me,” he retorted, once more himself and completely readjusted to the meaning of her return.

“Yes. To save my father. But I trusted you, too, else I could have avoided you. I would give my life to save my father, but it is too late now—I can neither save him nor myself. We live only so long as Zorogoff delays in coming.”

“You speak to thwart me,” he said bitterly.

She turned her palms upward in a gesture of submission and the slightest shrug of her shoulders, as if she had lost all interest in what the final result of what she said might be, and as if what he might do was a matter of little moment to her.

“I speak to save your soul,” she said softly. “But we shall not quarrel about it—either what you are to decide about us, or about your soul.”

“No?” he demanded, surprised that he should be nettled by her carelessness. “But you are pleading with me now.”

She gave him a look of surprise and laughed harshly.

“Pleading? For what? A few hours of life?”

“You might both escape,” he suggested, “by the droshky which you have so cleverly planned. That is, if I should let you go.”

“We could not get through without you. And what does it matter whether the Ataman Zorogoff kills my father in the morning, or you kill him now. No, Peter Petrovitch, I plead only to save you from blood upon your hands—and to save your own life—the life of an American officer.”

At this, he thought of Wassili and smiled.

“I mean Zorogoff,” she hastened to say. “He would not let you escape, if you gave him reason to destroy you—if you killed my father.”

“You can argue for Zorogoff, who will destroy you both?” he asked, making no attempt to mask his incredulity.

She lifted her shoulders again in that same almost imperceptible shrug, and looked casually out of the window.

“You can help America help our people,” she said. “As for Zorogoff, I have death ready at my bidding for myself before he could take me to his palace—I can defeat the dog of a Mongol. But what do you gain by your vengeance upon my father? A few hours of his life! Is that the measure of the value of your vengeance?”

“You think that I am too late—that I am already defeated in my purpose,” he said.

“Yes. You are, Peter Petrovitch. Time has defeated you.”

“No,” he insisted. “I have waited twenty years——”

“And after twenty years, you come back to what? Michael Kirsakoff and his daughter hiding from his Cossacks! The old governor, worse off than peasants, with death lurking at the door! The general of the Czar’s army, in flight and hiding like one of his own escapes in the old days! What sweeter vengeance would you ask, Peter Petrovitch?”

She spoke of her father and herself in the third person as if she were already separated from life and saw herself in the detachment of death, looking back upon her father’s and her own end.

“True, times have changed,” said Peter grimly.

“Yet you had no hand in it,” she said daringly, conscious that what she said might lift his wrath again. “The tree of hate has borne its own bitter fruit, and a gale of death sweeps the land——”

“Ay, the wheel has turned!” cried Michael from his chair. “And the water has returned to the sea! My sins are my own, and judgment is before me. But I have offered my life to you, Peter Gorekin, for——”

“Do not heed him!” said Katerin to Peter hastily, as she saw his eyes flame with sudden anger.

“I have come all the way from America to hear him,” said Peter. “Am I to be cheated——”

“America!” cried Katerin with fervor, clapping her hands together. “You, a Russian! Have come from America! And what are you to do with what America has given you?”

“And what has it given me?” he demanded in surprise.

“America has given you its trust—you, the poor son of an exile, by the coat you wear, are an officer—a gentleman! Ah, Peter Petrovitch, I had hoped that America had changed your heart as well as your coat—and taken something from you.”

“And what should it take?”

He scanned her face, seeking her purpose in holding his attention away from Michael. Her eyes held infinite sadness, and seemed to have lost any sense of terror. Her face had softened in final resignation, and he saw her for the first time in her own nature—the serene calmness which belongs to the Russian aristocrat, who is essentially a fatalist.

“I have heard much of America,” she said dreamily, her eyes on the window but her vision not extending beyond the glass. “I hoped that you, who are of my own race, should learn a new lesson in America—that the spirit of America should take from you that love of destruction, that love for vengeance which is so strong in our people. Countless millions have been willing to die, and have died for Holy Russia. When is the Slav to learn that he must live for Holy Russia?”

“Ah, those who have ruled Russia have just begun to learn how precious is life,” said Peter. “I learned the lesson out there in the Sofistkaya twenty years ago—it is you who are learning now—from me—and your Cossacks!”

“Yes, I know Shimilin has been here,” she said wearily. “We have come to the end. I cannot ask you to save us, even if you could or would. That is done.”

“You were willing—when you went down to arrange for the droshky. You could smile when you thought I was deceived.” His manner with her was easier now, and he seemed to be toying with the situation, testing her bravery.

“Yes, it was all a woman has against a man—a smile for a shield. And you thought you were deceiving me—you would tell to Rimsky what you would not tell to Vashka the samovar girl.”

“Vashka the samovar girl!” he repeated. “Vashka, telling me of Kirsakoff—a tall man in uniform, with black mustaches—a man in his full strength, stalwart—the cruel Governor who was behind the government of Zorogoff!”

“You were secretly seeking my father. It was my duty to learn your secret before you learned ours—a fair game.”

“True!” he admitted.

“I would save you now from the Ataman.” She gave him a quick and eager look. He misread her intent, when he thought she was turning his mind into new channels.

“Save me!” He was incredulous, and once more on the alert against some new plan to entrap him.

“Yes, to save you, Peter Petrovitch! If Zorogoff knows that you had our story, when we are dead, he will fear your knowledge against him—and destroy you.”

“You should think of my safety at this time! Why?”

She bent her head and turned from him, but he took both her arms and swung her so that she had to look into his face. But she evaded his glance, though she did not resist his grasp.

“I can tell you now because of the barrier between us,” she said.

“Barrier?” He was frankly puzzled.

“The blood of your father and your desire for vengeance stands between us—that is why I can tell you, Peter Petrovitch, that—I loved you——”

His hands loosened upon her arms, and a flood of tears was upon her—silent tears, which shook her frame. And Peter seized her again and threw his arms about her with crushing ferocity.

“Katerin! Katerin!” he cried, and the next instant released her as suddenly as he had swept her to him.

“Oh, God!” he cried, throwing up his clenched fists in a gust of fury. “Have I been brought to my enemy, only to be tormented? What am I to do, my father, what——?”

Michael had leaped from his chair with a cry, and faced Peter.

“What? What?” demanded the old general. “There is love—love between you two—my daughter——!” He was too shaken to frame more words, and his voice wavered and broke and lost itself in the depths of his throat. He stood with his frail legs bending under him, his mouth wide open and his chin quivering, gulping for breath to give him energy to express the emotions which shook his body and rendered him powerless to express himself.

Katerin flung herself at him to sustain and calm him, still fearful that Peter might attack under the slightest provocation—and she was in terror lest her father would give vent to an outburst of anger.

“I shall speak!” he said gently to Katerin, and at once he was strong again, as if he had rallied the last bit of his energy for his new venture of resistance. Katerin let him go on toward Peter, who stood waiting to see what the old man might have to say.

Michael sank to his knees before Peter, and held up his arms imploringly, while words began flowing from his agitated lips in a torrent.

“Give heed to what I say,” he cried beseechingly. “You, too, are a Russian! Look upon me, who once was your Governor! Have compassion upon me who am now but a bit of dried mud cast upon the road by the wheel of Time! Have mercy——”

“So you have learned what it is to ask for mercy, Michael Alexandrovitch! But you have yet to learn what it means to have mercy denied,” taunted Peter.

“It is not mercy that I ask for myself, Gorekin,” went on Michael. “But you love my daughter—and I stand between you! Save her! Save her from the Mongol. And leave me, who am but some of the wreckage of Holy Russia, to suffer the wrath of this Zorogoff!”

“We two shall die together, my father—your fate shall be mine,” said Katerin, “or I shall die by my own hand.”

“You saw me in the old days, Gorekin,” went on Michael in disregard of Katerin. “Were those days worse than these? I obeyed my orders. I held my power by the word of the Czar, and I bore his sword. Now I have lived beyond my time. My day is done. I am not of these days. How does it matter the manner of my end? I shall soon be with your father—I, Kirsakoff the Governor, with Gorekin the bootmaker and the political—in the hills above us. Then let God judge my sins, as will yours be judged! Take my daughter—she is all I have to give for the debt that is due you, yes, overdue! I am old, but my eyes still see, and I see that you two love! Take my Katerin Stephanovna to America, Peter Petrovitch! Flee, both of you——”

Katerin gave a warning cry and sprang toward the door leading into her room. She had caught the sound of running feet from the hall—feet in panic flight.

“Hush!” she warned. “Some one comes!”

Slipitsky, his black cap missing from the top of his head, and his eyes telling of his dread for something which pursued him, burst into the room. He clapped his hands to his temples in frantic despair in a gesture of hopelessness, too short of breath still from running to tell what he feared.

“The Ataman!” he gasped. “God’s doom is upon us!”