XXVI FAREWELL

THE morning was cold and foggy. Through the gray and frozen haze came the sounds of voices, the creaking of boots, the jangle of a distant bell from the horses of a troika—a ghostly world filled with ghostly shapes, hidden, yet full of unseen life. It was just such a morning as that one in the past when Peter Petrovitch waited for the Czar’s mail, and the column of unfortunates went clanking out into the wilderness to cut wood under a guard of Cossack soldiers.

And he who had been Peter Petrovitch sat this morning by the window of his room in the Dauria Hotel and gazed out over the world of floating mists—Lieutenant Peter Gordon of the United States Army. In the hall, outside his door, were two tall Cossack soldiers with their rifles, on guard.

A week had passed since the killing of the Ataman Zorogoff and the death of Kirsakoff. There had been a mutiny and an attempt by partisans of Zorogoff to kill Shimilin, the new Ataman. But the Cossacks were behind Shimilin, and the Mongols and other bandits who had stood with Zorogoff found their power broken, their intrigues betrayed and their leaders dead after firing squads. The survivors fled up and down the railroad. The régime of Zorogoff was at an end, with its looting, its terrorism, its mailed fist which demanded tribute in exchange for protection.

The body of Zorogoff was not buried in Chita. The second day after his death, there appeared in the city, from down Urga way, a lama from Outer Mongolia with frosty whiskers, a pinnacle cap and a greatcoat of fine fur with sleeves which reached to the ground. He came with a retinue mounted on camels, and the leading man held aloft a small purple banner which caused many men to submit their necks when they saw it pass. For somewhere down in the mountains to the south in the khanates of the Kalkas tribes, there was a Prince, and when he spoke, it was an order—an order to be obeyed.

And this lama of grave face and the tall cap summoned the Ataman Shimilin and bartered for the body of Zorogoff, who was half Mongol by blood, and that half of interest to the holy men of Forbidden Tibet. Shimilin, being wise in such things, knew how much he could ask to the ultimate jewel—and got it. And as the lama traded with Shimilin, there were hints of many more men from Mongolia lurking outside the city, hidden by the fog. A line of tiny fires gleamed at the edge of the plain, the Cossack outposts heard the grunting of baggage camels, and the murmur of countless voices drifted in through the fog.

So Zorogoff’s body was slung up between the humps of a Bactrian camel, and the animal went swaying off through the mist, with Zorogoff’s head nodding at the ground of ancient Tartary in his last farewell.

Of these things Peter knew little. He was still in danger, as was Katerin, for there were many in Chita who sought a way to avenge Zorogoff. There were few persons who knew Katerin had killed him, but such knowledge spreads easily in Asia, where there are so many ears listening, so many eyes watching, so many tongues whispering in strange tongues. So Shimilin kept a guard over the hotel, and in it, to see that Peter and Katerin were well protected.

And Peter had seen little of Katerin during the week. He had attended the military funeral at daybreak which Shimilin had granted the old general. Katerin was there, hidden and hemmed in among the Cossacks who had served under her father. Few knew who was being buried in the cemetery on the hillside above the ruin of the old prison. So it was that General Kirsakoff became a part of the Valley of Despair which he had ruled.

Katerin seemed to avoid Peter after the funeral. She kept to her own rooms, with Wassili, except the night they went with Shimilin and his soldiers to the old log house and retrieved the fortune in rubles which was hidden in the stove.

Peter waited till the days had softened her sorrow. He knew she wanted to be alone with her thoughts, as he did with his own. He had no way of knowing how her thoughts would turn in relation to him, but one fact made him happy—Katerin was safe for the time being. He did not know that she possessed a fortune, and he supposed that she would want to remain in Chita. He did not want her to feel any debt toward him for having helped her against the Ataman Zorogoff, and he did not want to presume upon the fact that while she was under the stress of death she had admitted her love for him. There was a barrier between them he well knew—the barrier of the circumstance that Peter would never have been in Chita if he had not sought to kill her father; and behind that, the circumstance that Peter had held her father responsible for the killing of his own father, and his own imprisonment. Peter knew there was nothing which could wipe out those accursed facts, and that they would hover over all thoughts Katerin might have for him. He saw himself fettered by bonds of his own making—and in the gyves of his love for her.

And how much he loved Katerin was just beginning to break upon him with the full fury of an emotion which had long been pent within his heart. He had loved Russia and his own kind; not the machinery of government which had been known as Russia, but the land, the very soil—hills, plains, and valleys. This love of his homeland was now centered upon Katerin, for she had become to him a personification of his own Russia, stricken and deserted by the rest of the world. And he was possessed of a passion to make amends for the vengeance which he nursed against her father. He longed to cherish and protect Katerin, to show her the land which had done so much for him, to take her by the hand and walk with her in the streets of the city where he learned that every man may work out his own destiny without the handicap of a system of government which measures what each man may do and not do according to the rank of his father—the land where the boy from a cabin may become a Lincoln!

In his soul, Peter felt that he had betrayed America. Though he had not killed Kirsakoff, Peter suffered torment that Katerin knew how madly he had sought to kill. And he feared that she would blame America, and not him, for keeping alive that love for vengeance.

He passed the days pacing the floor of his room, or sitting by the window. At times he was tempted to quit the city and never see Katerin again. But he could not do it. He preferred to take his punishment by having her tell him to go—at least, he could fill that place in his consciousness which had harbored hatred for Michael Kirsakoff with the sorrow that Kirsakoff’s daughter loved him yet would not face life with him. He felt that it would all be easier to bear if he carried with him a memory of his parting from her which would always lash him for the dreadful plan which he had devised and all but carried out.

As he sat there by the window this morning, there came a knock at the door. He admitted a messenger from Ataman Shimilin—a tall young Cossack with boyish face and filled with pride at the thought that once more his own people controlled the city. He saluted and clicked his polished steel spurs quite as if he were in the presence of royalty.

“From the Ataman!” he announced, and bowed as he handed a letter to Peter. It read:

I send two officers of my staff to-day to Vladivostok to make report to the American commander that I, Shimilin, am now Ataman, and that my government shall be just. I have taken the private car of Zorogoff, and knowing that you intend to return to Vladivostok soon, perhaps you would like to travel by this wagon. It is advisable to go aboard the car, which now stands in the station yards, while the fog still holds, and be picked up by the next train. If you have any friends to go with you, the station commandant is at your orders. The Irkutsk train for Vladivostok will be here within an hour, and it will pick up one of my armored cars for safety. Perhaps you will be able to report to your superiors that all Cossacks are not robbers and that we desire only the salvation of our Russia. I salute you and America.

Shimilin, Ataman.

Peter stepped to the writing table, picked up a pen, and wrote on a slip of paper:

I shall go at once. Thank you for the kindness. I hope to see the Ataman before I depart from his city.

Peter Gordon, Lieutenant.

The messenger bowed, clicked, and left the room, and Peter gathered his blankets and made them into a roll. Then he paused a minute, thoughtfully—and finally knocked upon the door leading to Katerin’s rooms.

The old serving woman who had been at the log house opened the door just enough to peep through.

“Tell your mistress that the American officer wishes to say good-by, please,” said Peter, and the door closed at once.

Peter was stricken with chagrin and disappointment. He thought that Katerin might not see him and had given her orders to that effect to her servant. He had expected that the door would open for him—and it had closed upon his request to see Katerin. He stood for a moment, wondering if he should not go down to Slipitsky at once, pay his bill, and go on to the car which stood in the station yard.

Then the door opened, and Katerin herself stood before him—a Katerin that he had never seen. She wore now, instead of the poor garments in which he had seen her as a samovar girl, the beautiful purple velvet gown which reached to her slippers. Her hair was high upon her head, dressed in the style of a Russian lady so that it suggested a crown—lifted from the front and turned back smoothly against the mass, and then drawn down tightly across the ears. Tall, slender, and stately she was now, such a woman as might be a princess of the blood. Hanging from her neck was a gorgeous string of pearls, and from her fingers gleamed jeweled rings. And Peter’s heart sank as his eyes rested upon her, for once again he realized with a pang that, after all, he was but Peter Petrovitch, son of a poor exile, and Katerin Stephanovna was of the Russian nobility. He saw a new barrier between them, and one which he had forgotten in his recent thoughts of her.

The joy which had come into his face at first glance at her was dissipated by his realization that this was the end for them, and he bowed a most formal bow.

She held out her hand to him, and he took it, like a man in a trance, but conscious of the jewels on her fingers.

“You are going away?” she said, with concern in her eyes—a concern which he knew to be politeness. She was still pale, he thought, and wistfully sad for her father.

“Yes,” he said. “I am to go—Shimilin sends me word that a private car is in the yards and——” He let his eyes wander to the figure of the serving woman, who was lurking behind the curtains which led to the far room. He wondered what he could say for she seemed so comfortable now with her servants—the old woman and Wassili—and so self-sufficient. How could she be otherwise than rich, he thought, with such clothes and such jewels? He wished that she had kept her clothes as a samovar girl, and then he might have found it possible to give utterance to some of the words which pressed him to be said. He would have found it much easier to blurt out what was in his heart if she had not been so grand and disconcerting in that velvet gown. He sensed a hurt within himself that she had done this—could it be that she had dressed herself deliberately for their meeting so that he should find it easy to keep his place?

“You have called to say good-by,” she said, and drew aside slightly. “Then you must come in—and we shall have a glass of tea.” Then, as if she divined what was in his mind about her changed appearance, she added, “We Kirsakoffs never mourn our dead with garments—an old custom of our warrior clan—instead, we wear our best, out of respect for those who have gone—and these poor things are the best I have. So please do not think it strange. Wassili! Fire the samovar and fetch fresh water for a guest of the house!”

“But are you safe?” burst out Peter. “You are in danger enough from those who may know you killed the Ataman, without revealing your jewels and your good clothes! There may be a rising against Shimilin at any time—the Bolsheviki—the bandits from Mongolia! It is too bad that you have put on these clothes—for your own safety!”

“You are afraid I shall be killed because I killed Zorogoff?” she asked, with the ghost of a smile on her lips.

“Yes, I am afraid,” he went on earnestly. “You should have remained in the dress of a samovar girl——”

“Oh, but I have done playing at being a samovar girl,” she laughed. “If I am to die, I shall die as a Kirsakoff, and not as a servant. So you are leaving the city soon?”

“I am leaving at once. Shimilin has sent me word that a private car is in the yards—and I cannot disregard such a hint, for he may mean it as a command. And—why don’t you go too?”

“I? Go? Where?” she seemed amazed at the idea.

“To Vladivostok. You would be safe there, and safe on the train. Take this chance to escape from the city, while Shimilin has control.”

She sat down and gestured him to a chair before her.

“I, too, have heard from Shimilin—about the car. But I shall not go.”

Peter’s face showed his disappointment. He had hoped that she might be induced to leave Chita, and by getting away from the scene of her father’s death and her old home, her memory of why Peter had gone to the city would be dimmed. Now he saw that she was determined to let him go his way—she wanted to see him no more, she wanted to forget him. And yet, he remembered, she had told him she loved him! He wondered if it were possible that she had admitted a love only because she wanted to save her father. Was that what she had meant when she said she had done with playing at being a samovar girl? That she had done with duplicity because there was no further necessity for duping him?

“It is a pity that you will not go,” he said wearily. He regretted that he had asked to see her at all, for he suspected that she was inclined to laugh at him now because as a samovar girl she had been able to deceive him so thoroughly.

“At least, I shall not go now,” she said. “Perhaps later—for there will be nothing to keep me here now.”

“Then come!” he pleaded, leaning forward, and holding out his hand. “I know what there is between us—Katerin. I know now how wrong I was about your father—I can claim no credit for having helped you the little I did—I want no credit—but I was blind with hate for the old régime. Now I wish to help you——”

He stopped and shook his head, seeing that he was not giving her help to get away from the city—Shimilin had already done that if he had offered her the use of the private car. It struck him now that perhaps her suggestion that she might leave later had something to do with his going now—she did not want to travel with him.

She sat tapping her fingers on the arm of the chair and looking at the rings on her hand, reflectively, yet with something that told she had already made up her mind as to what she should do and that they were talking to no purpose.

“I tell you,” he began again. “I shall not go with the car, if you will consent to leave for Vladivostok. If you prefer that I should not——”

“No, you must not stay here,” she said.

“But I shall stay if you do not go!” he cried.

She gave him a startled look. “Stay? Why, you cannot stay here always. I thought you came to say good-by.”

He stood up. “If you wish it, it shall be good-by,” he said. “But I am not going away.”

“You must not be absurd,” she said, and stood up also, a faint trace of color in her cheeks. “Why should you remain here?”

“Because I care for your safety, that’s why! I promised your father that I would protect you and——”

She tossed her head back, and regarded him through half-closed lids.

“You may consider yourself released from that promise,” she said. “You owe no debt—do not trouble yourself on that score, because——”

“Katerin!” he cried, holding out his hands to her imploringly. “You know what I mean—you know that your father desired your safety! Then let us forget my promise, but——”

“You do not make your promises to keep them, is that it? Then you are not bound by anything, Peter——” She shrugged her shoulders and turned her face from him.

“Go on!” he commanded. “You were going to say ‘Peter Petrovitch.’ Why have you turned against me? Katerin, I love you, and even if you will let what has happened stand between us, I want to see that you escape——”

“You but want to keep your promise to my father, and you think only of what he may have desired about me!” she retorted with a show of anger, her face aflame. “You have no debt to a Kirsakoff, living or dead, in any way! Do I owe you anything? Perhaps I do, but I can pay you! What price, I ask? What price, Peter Petrovitch Gorekin?”

He stood dumfounded and gazed at her. She turned abruptly, and opened the top of a trunk which he had not seen before.

“What price?” she demanded.

“Price! Price!” he gasped. “Why, you owe me nothing! Please do not insult me—I wished to see you again—I wished to say good-by—please, mistress——” the word escaped him,—the word of deference to the upper class, the word of recognition that she was impossibly above him in the Russian social caste.

She let the top of the trunk fall, and putting her hands to her face, burst into tears. Just then Wassili stuck his head through the green curtains and looked in, startled and angry. Peter was about to reassure the moujik that no harm threatened his mistress, but before Peter could speak, Wassili burst through the curtains and he held in his hand a great knife. The Slavic battle rage took possession of Peter at sight of the knife, and all the restraints imposed upon him by civilized life left him in one mad instant. He knew but one thing—he loved Katerin, and Wassili was going to stand in the way. The blade in the moujik’s hand swept away all the fine perplexities which had harassed Peter—these points of honor which he saw as a barrier between him and Katerin. He snapped out his pistol and pointed it at Wassili.

“Get back through that curtain!” he commanded, and stepped forward toward Wassili. The moujik pressed back, but did not leave the room.

“What’s this?” cried Katerin, turning upon Peter angrily.

He made no reply, but shifting his pistol into his left hand, he kept Wassili covered with the weapon. Then he paused for an instant. Before Katerin or Wassili understood his intent, Peter seized her with his right arm and lifted her against his shoulder. With his left elbow under his head, he kept the muzzle of the pistol toward Wassili, and backed out of the room through the open door into his own room.

Peter put Katerin upon her feet, just as Wassili moved after him—and Peter beckoned the moujik on.

“And what may this be about?” demanded Katerin, staring at Peter as though she suspected that he was bereft of his senses.

“A marriage by abduction—the old folk custom of our people,” declared Peter grimly. “Wassili! You bear witness! I have taken Katerin Stephanovna Kirsakoff from her house to mine—and there must be a witness. She is now my wife—and she must do as I say. So put away the knife—you cannot take from me the woman I have stolen!”

Katerin burst out in laughter.

“You Peter Petrovitch!” she exclaimed. “I thought you were an American—and yet you are Russian—stealing a wife by the old custom! Do you think I am to take this seriously?”

“You will find it is serious—till you are safe in Vladivostok,” retorted Peter. “Then—well, once you are safe, you may do as you wish. But I am master till then.”

She laughed again.

“So you are American after all—in Vladivostok I may do as I wish! How can you call yourself Russian? Go away, Wassili—it is but a joke!”

Wassili, not quite sure it was such a joke, put away his knife, and went back to the far room. Katerin shut the door, and then turned to Peter, who stood looking at her, resenting a trifle her taking it as a joke at all.

“We shall go aboard the car at once,” he said. “Get ready your baggage, please.”

“Ah, he is Russian again!” laughed Katerin.

“What does it matter if I am Russian or not?” said Peter. “When I try to consider your feelings, you insult——”

“No, no, Peter,” she begged, and went to him and put her hands gently on his sleeves, looking up into his face. “You did not understand—you know nothing of a woman’s heart—I told you once that I loved you——”

“Yes!” cried Peter. “You told me that, and then you insist upon staying here when I want to protect you—when you know there is a chance to go——”

“Growl—growl like a Russian bear, Peter! But did you not come to say good-by?”

“To take you with me if I could.” He seized her hands. “O, Katerin, think this over and see what I want you to see—when you get to Vladivostok——”

“And what when I get to Vladivostok? What am I to do when I get to Vladivostok?”

“Well, you will know what you want to do, then?”

“Do about what?”

“I want you to marry me—to go to America—to——”

She stamped her foot.

“You are a hopeless American!” she cried. “I like you better as a Russian, Peter Petrovitch!” She dropped her head, and as he gave a cry of joy, she looked up, her face radiant with joy and flushed with color.

“Katerin! You will marry me?”

“How can I help myself—I have been stolen by the old law, and now——”

“Yes, what?”

“I know that you want me—not for a promise—but for myself—Peter——”

“O God!” he cried, “I know now I am forgiven!” and he crushed her to him.

Presently there came a knocking at the door of Katerin’s room, and the old serving woman came when Katerin called to her to enter.

“Tell Wassili to pack my baggage,” said Katerin. “We are all going to Vladivostok—at once.”

“But let Wassili first go for a priest,” said Peter. “And do not cry, my love—we shall both say farewell forever to the Valley of Despair, and our journey’s end shall be America—our America.”

“America!” she whispered, looking through the window as if her eyes saw behind the fog-banks a strange land. “What a wonderful country America must be!”

“You cannot know till you have seen,” said Peter.

“I know now,” she replied, smiling through her tears, “I know now, Peter Petrovitch.”

“How can you know, my love?”

“Because—I know a Russian who became an American—the son of a bootmaker—a bootmaker who was an unfortunate—a poor boy——”

“Hush, hush!” he said, and put his arms about her again, seeing where her thoughts were straying—to the fresh brown mound on the bleak hillside by the ruin of the old prison. “They are together, your father and mine. Because of that, we shall not forget our Holy Russia. Would not they both be happy—are they not both happy, knowing what they must know now, and seeing what the dead must see? We living think we would do one thing, but is it not that the dead guide us, knowing better than we what is before us and what we shall do before we have finished? Truly, as the wise say, from evil good—my love was here but I did not know it—and now I have found her.”

And as the fog shrouded them from the street, there was nothing to prevent him from kissing her once more.

THE END

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Transcriber’s Notes: Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected. Typographical errors were silently corrected. Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only when a predominant form was found in this book.