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!”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
XXV
THE FINAL RECKONING
THE door leading to the hall was flung open. Shimilin, the Cossack
captain, stood on the threshold, and behind him was a group of his
wild-looking soldiers, their heads hooded with wrappings of furs, and
the points of their shining bayonets bristling about their shoulders.
Shimilin did not advance, but remained in the doorway, coldly surveying
those inside the room. He gave each of them a casual glance—Michael,
Katerin, Peter, and even the shivering Slipitsky who stood cowering
against the wall and whispering to himself through trembling lips and
fingering his beard in nervous terror.
“The Ataman Zorogoff!” announced Shimilin, and the soldiers behind him
opened a narrow lane, as Shimilin stepped aside and into the room.
The Ataman pushed through the guards, and strode into the room, looking
straight at Peter, stern and challenging. The Mongol chieftain’s
greatcoat was off, and his somewhat fantastic costume betrayed his
childish love for personal display. Rising from the swarthy forehead was
the towering white cap of long hairy wool, studded in the center of its
flat front by a wide slab of crudely hammered gold half the size of a
man’s hand, and in it set a diamond. At his left side hung a tremendous
scimitar with a hilt-knot of gold fiber swinging from the guard. He wore
a snuff-brown tunic with big brass buttons, blue riding breeches with
double stripes of gold braid down the sides, and heavy black boots
fitted with wheel-like spurs of silver. His shoulders were covered with
broad straps of gold cloth. In his belt were a pair of pistols, the
butts sticking up from the tops of uncovered holsters. An order of the
Czar hung from the top of a tunic pocket, an odd link between the
shattered empire and this usurper, who was crafty enough to display upon
his person something which still had a meaning to many of his followers
and reflected a trace of the vanished glory of the throne.
A pair of gold devices gleamed upon the standing collar of the tunic of
the Ataman, and his long black hair which fringed his ears, was all the
blacker for the whiteness of the woolly cap.
Zorogoff marched toward Peter, his boots pounding the floor
belligerently, his small black eyes burning with a glittering menace.
But he stopped when he could have put out his hand and touched
Peter—stopped with an abrupt and final thump of the heel of his left
boot as he planted it close beside the right boot.
“There is the American officer,” said Shimilin, still standing by the
door. “That is the man, sir, who sent the message.”
Some of the soldiers edged into the room and grounded their rifles with
jarring thuds, and the others outside in the hall pressed forward,
thrusting their heads in.
Peter bowed. “I am Lieutenant Gordon of the American army,” he said with
cold formality, and returned the Ataman’s angry stare.
“I have come to hear you oppose my will,” growled Zorogoff, a wicked
twist to the corner of his lips, and venom in his eyes.
“And what is your will, sir?” demanded Peter, putting enough deference
into his words and manner to prevent Zorogoff from having any complaint
on the ground of lack of civility or respect.
“My officers report that you have been in my city several days. You come
here as an American and ignore me and my government.”
“I can assure you that you will not be ignored by the American army,
sir,” said Peter.
“Do you, representing the American army, dare tell my officers what they
may not do?”
“I requested your officer not to arrest General Kirsakoff and his
daughter in my room. They came here to talk with me, and till I have
finished talking with them, your officers must not interfere, sir.”
Zorogoff’s breathing became audible to Peter, and he saw the flat
nostrils of the Ataman twitch, and growing anger flashing in his eyes.
But he did not take his eyes from Peter’s, nor was there the slightest
change of expression in the Mongol’s immobile face after that lifting of
the nostrils. Behind the Ataman stood Shimilin, smiling sneeringly over
the shoulder of his chief, in an obvious attempt to break through
Peter’s armor of stolid patience.
“My officers must not interfere!” echoed the Ataman. “Is it that I take
orders from the Americans?”
“No, it is not an order, but——”
“Good!” blustered the Ataman. “It is not an order!”
“It is not an order,” went on Peter, in the same even tones. “But you
must take care that you do not interfere with American officers. I tell
you now, sir, that if these people are arrested in my room, I shall
demand to know the reason for their arrest, that they are properly
charged and tried, and given the right to a proper defense. Otherwise it
may appear to the Russian people that an American officer has betrayed
this old man and his daughter to you, and delivered them into your
hands. I cannot prevent you from arresting them, from executing them if
you wish, but I can reveal to the commander of the American army and to
the people of America, the methods of your rule, sir.”
“I rule here, and in my own way. I ask no help in ruling from the
Americans,” grunted Zorogoff.
“And the Americans are vitally interested in _how_ you rule, sir,”
retorted Peter.
“I rule as I please, with account to no one!” raged Zorogoff. “Captain
Shimilin! Take the old man and the woman!”
“Wait!” cried Peter, throwing up his hand to Shimilin. “You are invading
my room! I claim the only right to give orders here!”
“I take Russian subjects where I find them, and I do with them as I see
fit!” thundered Zorogoff, his face seeming to swell with rage at Peter’s
words.
Captain Shimilin turned as if to obey the Ataman’s order, but he
hesitated, the same sneering smile upon his lips. He appeared much
amused at Peter’s defiance, and only too willing to let him further
enrage the Ataman.
“You speak of subjects of Russia, sir,” said Peter, addressing Zorogoff.
“Am I to have the honor of reporting that the Ataman Zorogoff occupies
the throne of all the Russias? And perhaps part of Mongolia?”
Zorogoff made a grimace, and the flesh about his eyes crinkled tightly.
Peter saw that he had struck a vital spot in the pride of Zorogoff, and
had touched upon a matter which revealed some of Zorogoff’s power as a
pretender—his strength came from his affinity with Asiatic people
through his Asiatic blood. His leadership was racial, for he was
exploiting his Mongol heritage and behind him were princes of ancient
Tartary whispering against white ascendancy in their own land.
“That is the Russian speaking,” said Zorogoff, “not the American! You
turned your back on your own people, and come now in a strange coat to
give orders with——”