who have been there and return to their own land, you will once more go
to America.”
“Oh, yes. I shall go back when Russia has her freedom. But what did your
father say? Have you persuaded him to help me about Kirsakoff? You have
not told me that.”
“My father is discouraged. You must not be annoyed if he is slow and
cautious with you, who are a stranger. He has said that he doubts if one
American officer can fight the army of Zorogoff.”
“But he must remember also that I am a Russian. Does he think I will
hide behind my American coat, and allow Kirsakoff and Zorogoff to
destroy you? I may be only one, but behind me is the American army, and
Zorogoff must give heed to that.”
“But if Zorogoff’s men should kill you? We have seen terrible things
here—men are shot down crossing the street if they are opposed to
Zorogoff. And who is to know who fired the shot if you should meet such
a fate? Then, if it were known to Zorogoff that we had helped you, it
would be the worse for us, with no one to protect us.”
“True,” said Peter, “but it is one thing for Zorogoff to terrorize a
girl and a helpless old man, and quite another for him to frighten or
kill an American officer—or defy the American army. He is aware of that,
and he will be careful with me.”
“But your soldiers are in Vladivostok.”
“That is near enough to make Zorogoff think twice. In time he would have
to pay the shot. And once we have found Kirsakoff and I have attended to
my business, we shall leave the city.”
“You are brave,” she said simply, with a look of admiration.
He shrugged his shoulders. “It is you have been brave. It is easy for me
to talk, with an army at my back. Please—tell me one thing—are you
expecting an American officer to come here and meet you and your
father?”
She looked at him in surprise, as if trying to understand what meaning
might be behind his question. She locked her fingers together, and took
her time before replying.
“No, we are not expecting an American officer. Our friends may send help
to us. That is why I came to you—any newcomer in the city might bring
word from friends—might be seeking to get news to us from friends.”
She laughed suddenly in comprehension of his meaning, and went on
hastily. “We who are beset clutch at any straw—and you were a straw. Yet
was I not wise? For you have said you will save us—you would even take
us away, or——”
Katerin stopped abruptly, and looked into the light of the lamp. Her
eyes showed more animation now, and Peter found himself admiring the
patrician poise of her head. She turned away from his gaze, and shivered
slightly.
“Or what?” he prompted.
“Or you would even kill Kirsakoff for us—rid us of one of our enemies.”
Peter’s eyes narrowed, and he smiled.
“What makes you think I would kill Kirsakoff?” he asked. “Have I said
anything to make you believe that?”
“No,” she admitted, returning his gaze for an instant. “You have not
said that. But if my father is to help you find Kirsakoff, you must
first convince us that you are an enemy of Kirsakoff. It will be a
secret for a secret, in the old way of bargaining among the exiles. We
have trusted you much, but how do we know what your purpose is in
finding Kirsakoff?”
Peter frowned at the floor and considered what she had said. He had not
counted on having to take any one into his confidence. He did not doubt
that he would be able to find Kirsakoff on his own account, if he had
plenty of time. But his time in Chita was not at his own disposal. An
American officer might come through the city and report that he had seen
Peter; before very long, Peter would be compelled to go on to Irkutsk
and report himself from there, or go down the line of the railroad. And
once in touch with Vladivostok, he knew that orders might come from
headquarters which would compel him to appear in some other city without
delay.
And what damage could be done by telling this girl and her father his
reasons for wanting Kirsakoff? They, themselves, feared and hated the
Governor, who was again in power. They could be trusted not to betray
him.
“What you say is fair enough,” he said finally. “I think I can convince
your father that I am the friend of anybody who was an exile, and
that——” He was about to add, “I am an enemy of Michael Kirsakoff.” But
he refrained. There would be time enough for that when he talked with
her father, and he was determined that before he told his story, he
should meet and judge for himself the measure of confidence to be given
to the old man who had been an exile.
“I should like to know your full reasons—for wanting to find Kirsakoff,”
suggested Katerin. She, too, was wary.
“You shall hear,” he said, “when I talk with your father.” And he spoke
with finality, as if there were no use in going further with the
subject.
She went to the wardrobe against the wall, and turning to Peter, said,
“Move this away from the door which leads to our rooms—I got the Jew to
bring us near to you. Now we can pass from our rooms to yours without
going into the hall. It will be safer, for we cannot tell who will see
us if we have to use the hall.”
“That was wise,” he said, and going to the wardrobe, he put his shoulder
against it, and steadying it with his hand, shoved it aside far enough
to clear the door which it concealed. When he had finished, she picked
up the shade of the lamp and slipped it back over the globe.
“We are not known to the servants,” she said. “You must be careful with
our names—which are—Natsavaloff.”
“Perhaps it will be well to avoid using any names,” said Peter. “It
might increase your danger.”
“It would, indeed,” she agreed. “Now, I shall go round and free the bolt
on our side—and take you to my father.”
Katerin slipped into the hall, and Peter snapped out the light on the
table and waited in darkness. In a minute he heard the rattle of the
bolt on the far side of the door, and then it swung open slowly.
Katerin stood before him, outlined against the dim light seeping in from
a farther room through curtains hanging in a doorway.
“Come!” she directed in a whisper. “My father is eager to talk with you.
But remember—he is very old, and he is still in some pain from his
wounds. And if he is querulous, I trust that you will be patient with
him.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
XIX
FACE TO FACE
PETER stepped across the threshold of the open door, and into the shaft
of light spilling through the partly curtained doorway of the room
beyond. Looking to the end of this vista of light, he saw the figure of
a man sitting in a chair by a table. The head and upper part of this
man’s body were only vaguely visible and merged against the dark
background of the far wall. But his boots were silhouetted in the
radiance of the beams of the lamp which shot downward under the
shade—boots that looked grotesquely large and misshapen, for their
shadows were cast upon the floor in elongated outline.
Katerin stopped at the curtained doorway, and by a gesture, bade Peter
enter before her. He went on, and as he neared the lamp on the table, he
saw that the figure in the chair was a frail old man with his head tied
up in a bandage. And behind the chair, better hidden by the gloom, was a
man standing, whom Peter took for a servant hovering over his master
with watchful care. Only the face of the _moujik_ was plainly visible to
Peter, and his eyes shining with the reflected light of the lamp, like
two luminous pin-pricks, were boring across the room at Peter. The tense
alertness of the _moujik’s_ posture suggested an animal crouching for a
spring.
Katerin passed Peter, and approached her father. She said, “Our friend
has come to us,” and to Peter, “This is my father.”
Peter’s heels came together, and he bowed low. When he looked at the old
man again, the withered head, wrapped in the encircling bandage, was
nodding gently as if with a palsy. And the bent shoulders leaned forward
under a gray blanket, to peer at the visitor. The right hand, hidden
beneath the blanket over his legs, seemed to be trembling, while his
left hand lifted from his knee made a motion toward a chair—it was a
thin, bony hand, more like a claw than a hand.
“I bid you welcome, sir,” piped Michael, hoarsely. “But I have little
hospitality to offer a guest under this roof.”
“May God’s blessings fall upon you, sir,” replied Peter, his heart
quickened by sympathy with this pathetic old ruin of a man—a man who,
like his own father as Peter thought, had suffered the life of an exile
under the cruel rule of the Governor, Michael Kirsakoff. Here, Peter
supposed, was another victim, in feeble senility, still pursued and
threatened by Zorogoff and the same Governor Kirsakoff who had brought
about the death of Peter’s father, and thrown the boy Peter into a big
prison. And these thoughts fed the inward flame of hatred which burned
through Peter’s being against Michael Kirsakoff—the very man before him,
and on whom he had just called for the blessing of God! Here was his
enemy of old, and he looked upon him, yet knew him not.
For a time the two men peered at each other, one knowing that an enemy
was before him, and one thinking that he was in the presence of a
friend. But Peter saw nothing in the old man which brought to mind
anything of Michael Kirsakoff. Katerin, as Vashka, the samovar girl, had
so arranged the shaded lamp, and the chairs, that her father’s face
should not stand out clearly in light against a dark background. Also
the bandage hid the jaws and cheeks of Michael in such a way that the
old man’s facial contour was blurred. Age had done much to hide Michael,
and Peter’s memory was clinging to his own picture of Kirsakoff of
twenty years before. And Peter had adjusted his mind to the finding of
Kirsakoff as a result of this interview, and somewhere beyond it, so it
would have been hard to convince him that Kirsakoff was now before him.
“You come as an American officer, yet my daughter tells me that you are
one of us—a Russian who has come back to help Russia,” said Michael.
“Yes, and it is twenty years since I saw my native land,” said Peter, as
he sat down.
“Ah, it is a sad home-coming for one of the motherland’s children,”
sighed Michael. “They say now that the people will rule at last.”
Katerin stepped to the table to draw hot water from the samovar, which
was so placed that she stood almost between Peter and her father, though
without preventing them from seeing each other. She did not trust to her
precautions against Peter’s recognizing her father, knowing that there
were elements in the situation which might bring on some mischance on
the side of tragedy.
And Wassili acted according to his instructions. As Peter sat down, the
_moujik_ left Michael’s chair, and offered the guest a cigarette from a
tin box, lighted a match—and remained behind Peter’s chair. Thus it
appeared to Peter that he was being tendered the usual courtesies.
“It is true that times have changed, sir,” said Peter.
“Ay, they have, truly,” said Michael. “And some say for the better.
Perhaps. But I’ll not live to see it all finished. I shall get no good
from it. But we must remember those who have died dreaming dreams for
the future.”
“True,” said Peter. “And this ground is full of such—we must remember
them, and it is our duty to see that they did not sacrifice themselves
for nothing.”
“My daughter tells me that you know our story—that I was a political
here.”
“In the time of Kirsakoff, the Governor,” said Peter.
“Kirsakoff!” said Michael. “Ah, yes, I had good reason to know
Kirsakoff. There are many waiting their chance to settle with him, and
he has but a short time for this world. But one of the lessons we
learned here, my friend, was to bide our time—and I am waiting.”
“And Kirsakoff is in with Zorogoff?”
“That Mongol dog!” said Michael. “Have you heard that he has visited
upon my daughter and me the silent torture? And that even now we hide
from him? Yes. Well, he has buried people to their necks by the dozen,
and then sent horsemen galloping over the ground. But if God is good I
shall live to see his head carried about on the end of a pole!”
“And Kirsakoff stands behind him, I hear,” said Peter.
Michael exchanged glances with Katerin. “True, it is Kirsakoff who helps
him hold his power.”
“But it is dangerous to talk of Kirsakoff,” said Katerin, as she handed
Peter a glass of tea. “That is whisper talk, and I warn you.”
“No,” grumbled Michael. “Your life would be worth little if you let it
be known that you are in possession of that secret. You are playing a
dangerous game if you wish to get close to Kirsakoff.”
“But if he only knows me as an American,” suggested Peter.
“What! You, who speak the real Russian!” exclaimed Michael. “Do not be
fooled—he will know you for a Russian!”
“I can arrange that,” said Peter, with a smile. “If I can find him, that
is a matter easy enough to be handled as the business needs.”
Michael shook his head energetically.
“No, no, my friend! Kirsakoff’s hand is hidden. Your life would be in
danger at once if you gave a hint that you even know that Kirsakoff is
in the city. Be sure of that.”
“Then I can pretend I do not know him,” pressed Peter. He was somewhat
disappointed by the resistance offered by the old man.
“You must remember, my father, that our friend has reasons of his own
for wanting to find the Governor. And danger may not be a matter of
concern.”
Peter gave her a grateful glance for thus allying herself with him.
“If I were to tell you my reason for wanting Kirsakoff, I am sure that
you would say that it is good, sir. I have waited many years to come
back—and now I must not fail. I shall find Kirsakoff.”
“But I should not like to be the one who puts your life in danger,” said
Michael. “You may not be aware of all it means—this business of the
Governor is not a light subject. You will do well not to cross his
tracks, for he will strike at you through Zorogoff’s spies, and you will
never know who struck. One cannot fight an army—and Zorogoff will not
brook any interference. He will destroy you like a fly upon his bread.”
“I court the danger,” said Peter, sipping his tea, and willing to wait
till the old man was in a humor to be more communicative.
“The Governor has five thousand rifles at his back,” said Michael. “You
cannot know yet the full danger.”
“I shall go gladly to meet it,” persisted Peter. “It cannot be any
greater than my desire to find Kirsakoff.”
“You would risk death?” asked Michael.
“Even death.”
“What! Twenty years in America, and you would risk death to find
Kirsakoff?”
“What you say is true, sir.”
The old man studied Peter carefully for a minute. “You speak,” he said
finally, “as if you had spent twenty years in the Governor’s prison,
instead of twenty years in America.”
“I spent time enough in his prison,” said Peter.
Katerin uttered an involuntary exclamation of surprise.
“Here! You were in the old prison here?” she asked.
“I was,” said Peter, with a grim tightening of his lips.
“But you are too young to have been an exile!” gasped Michael. “If you
had been one of—us, I can well understand. There are many who have been
here for long years—they have known the chains, they have known a
lifetime in cells. And still, they have no stomach for meeting the
Governor face to face. That is because they know Kirsakoff—and that he
is not a man who can be hunted like a rabbit.”
“I also knew him,” said Peter. “I doubt if I will fear him, even if I
come face to face with him—and he knows me for a Russian, and by my true
name.”
“Oh! So you knew Kirsakoff?” asked Katerin. “Then it will not be so
difficult for you to find him.”
“I knew him too well,” said Peter, now beginning to fear they would
settle themselves against helping him to find Kirsakoff, and seeing that
he would have to take them into his confidence if they were to be of any
help to him. “I knew him when I was a boy here—and I have an old score
to pay off. I have come to pay it, and I shall not be kept from finding
Kirsakoff, even though he were the new Czar.”
“You must have been an unfortunate to have been in the prison,” said
Katerin. She was still gazing at him with curious eyes, as if she could
not believe that he was really telling the truth about himself—as if she
thought he was making his story fit his necessity for finding Kirsakoff
and was making it as serious as possible to induce them to help him.
“My father was an unfortunate—a political—here in the Valley of
Despair.”
“Indeed, was he?” asked Michael, with renewed interest. “You mean that
he was here in the time that Kirsakoff was Governor?”
“In the same time—when I was a boy,” said Peter, and looked at Katerin.
Her face was full of shocked surprise. She seemed horror-stricken at the
idea, and he wondered why she should think it so strange and so
terrible. He rather expected that she would see that they would all be
drawn together in common trouble, and have a common hatred for
Kirsakoff.
“How strange,” she said, turning to the lamp. “Then you are one of us—no
wonder you seek Kirsakoff.”
“Ay, that is a new string to the fiddle,” agreed Michael. “I can
understand now that you should want to find the Governor. Perhaps you
are right in this matter after all—and I must think it over. You have
reason enough, yet it is a serious thing for me to put you in danger.”
Peter felt better at this new attitude of the old man, and thought that
now they regarded him with a more friendly eye. He was, in truth, one of
them, and there is a strong bond of sympathy between exiles and the
children of exiles.
“And we might have known—could we have known your father?”
“You could not have known my father. He died here twenty years
ago—before I went to America,” said Peter.
“Twenty years! That is a long time to wait for vengeance,” said Michael.
“Many things are forgotten in twenty years, and time cures many things.”
“Ay, so it is a long time, in one way, and in another a short time. It
seems but yesterday that I was a boy here in Chita. You, sir, have
worked all your life to see Russia a free land. And like you, I have
learned to bide my time.”
“Things must look strange to you here,” said Katerin. “The city has
grown in twenty years.”
“Yes, outwardly things look different. But the hills, the old prison,
the streets—I see them as they were. During my years in America I never
forgot, though I confess I had little hope of ever coming back. But the
war gave me my chance. I was going to France, but when the government
decided to send troops here, I volunteered for service in Siberia. Was
it not God-given that I should be allowed to come back to my native
land—and to come to Chita?”
“True,” said Katerin, “if the debt, as you call it, which you owe to the
Governor, is such that God would have it paid.” She moved her chair in
such way that she was nearer the table, and so that she was closer to
her father. Also, she managed so that she cut more light from her
father’s face.
“And what is the debt?” asked Michael. “If it is not a secret—if I am to
tell you where you may find the Governor, perhaps you will see it in
such way that you can trust me with the secret.”
“It was Kirsakoff’s orders which brought about my father’s death.”
Katerin’s teeth shut down upon her lower lip, and her fingers closed
slowly upon the sides of her chair. She sat rigid, staring at Peter, and
her face became paler. Michael did not move, but his breath began to
come faster, and he wheezed, as if his chest had tightened and he was
about to cough.
“Killed your father?” asked Katerin, in low tones.
“No, Kirsakoff did not strike with his own hand,” went on Peter, still
gazing fixedly at the lamp. “But he ordered my father back to the
prison, and when my father ran after the Governor to beg for mercy, a
Cossack soldier cut my father down with a sword. And I was thrown into
the big prison on the hill—I, a poor helpless boy who had done nothing.”
Wassili moved uneasily behind the chair of Peter, and Katerin gave the
_moujik_ a glance of disapproval.
“Then you do know,” said Katerin to Peter, “how cruel the Governor was
to the poor unfortunates. And that is why you seek him.”
“What was done to my father and me—what was it? Only the ordinary thing
of the old days, as you know. Yes, that is why I seek Kirsakoff, and why
I ask your help to find him.”
“And how long were you in the prison?” asked Michael. “There must have
been a charge against you?”
“I was in prison three months, as near as I can tell,” replied Peter.
“Three months of hell on earth and in darkness, forgotten to the world!
It might have been three years, or three hundred, measured in my
suffering—the terrible sounds by day and by night, the rats—and I might
have been there till now, or dead, so far as Kirsakoff cared.” His
bitterness was growing, and his face was getting livid with rage.
“And for nothing?” asked Katerin. “Had you done nothing against the
Governor—or the laws of the Czar?”
“Ay, even Kirsakoff would have mercy on a boy,” said Michael.
“I did nothing, I swear,” went on Peter. “It was the orders of Kirsakoff
which sent me to prison. It was this way—an officer knocked me down in
front of the post-house. And when my father came to pick me up, the
Governor ordered both of us taken away to the prison.
“You see, my father belonged to the free gang—he was a political, as
were you. My mother died here, in the Street of the Dames. I never knew
her. But my father was good and kind to me. He was all I had in the
world, he was all I loved, though in those days (and Peter smiled
wistfully) I was taught to love the Little Father, the Czar.
“My father was struck down before my eyes, and when I was taken to the
prison, the officer in charge of the books was drunk—and he put my name
down in the book wrong—put my name down as my father’s—gave my father’s
name to me, so that the records appeared to show that it was my father
and not me, the boy, back in prison. I did not know what they were
doing, and for three months it was supposed that it was my father, the
political, who was in the cell by order of the Governor.”
“Then no doubt the Governor freed you—gave you the pardon,” said
Michael.
“No,” said Peter. “It was God’s hand that set me free. Some convicts
escaped one night, and were recaptured by the cordons in the _taiga_.
But before the soldiers took them, they had waylaid a sledge carrying an
American fur-buyer to Irkutsk. His name was Gordon. The convicts robbed
him. When Gordon got back here to Chita, he was taken to the prison and
the convicts were brought out to be identified by him as the robbers. It
happened that one of these men, named Grassi, had been put in the cell
with me. When he was taken out into the prison yard, I was taken with
him. Then it was discovered that I was the son of my father, and that
there was no charge against me. Mr. Gordon, the American, asked to take
me as his servant. I was released, the prison commandant corrected the
records, and Mr. Gordon took me with him to America.”
Peter paused, and looked at Michael, to see what effect the story had
had on the old man. But Michael’s head was nodding gently, and he seemed
to be turning the matter over in his mind, his lips moving as if he were
shaping words which he did not speak aloud.
Katerin stood up suddenly, and tested the fire in the samovar. She
seemed agitated, and Peter assumed that she suffered with indignation at
hearing his sufferings at the hands of the Governor. Then she turned to
him swiftly.
“What will you do—when you find the old—Kirsakoff?” she demanded.
“I shall kill him,” said Peter simply, and was aware of a quivering hand
upon the back of his chair. He turned and looked at Wassili. The
_moujik’s_ eyes were shining like a cat’s before a fire, and there was
the look of murder in his face.
“Kill him!” cried Michael. “But he did not kill your father!”
Peter was startled for an instant by the old man’s horror, and Katerin’s
face revealed the fact that she had never dreamed that the American
officer was bent on murder—she seemed actually to be in terror of him.
Peter suffered a moment of abashment, and gulped down what was left of
the tea in his glass. He understood that these people did not yet fully
appreciate how wantonly his father had been killed, nor how little
provocation there was for the killing. He was determined to convince
them of the justice of his designs.
“My father and I,” he began anew, “lived in a little hut down the
Sofistkaya—it is there yet—I can see it from the windows of my room. An
old man lives in it now, a queer old patriarch, who sells cigarettes——”
“That is Rimsky!” exclaimed Wassili to Katerin. She nodded, and looked
at him so that she checked him.