"Impossible!" I echoed, staring at the all-powerful official. "Why?"
He shrugged his shoulders, slowly flicked the ash from his cigarette and
glanced at the paper which the officer had handed to him.
I saw that beneath the candle-light his heavy features had changed. The
diamond upon his finger flashed evilly.
"My pen and writing-pad," he said, addressing his aide-de-camp.
The latter went to the writing-table and handed what he required.
His Excellency rapidly scribbled a few words, then tearing off the sheet
of paper handed it to me, saying:
"As you so particularly wish to see them, I suppose your request must be
granted. Here is an order to the prison governor."
I took it with a word of thanks, and without delay put on my heavy fur
shuba and accompanied the aide-de-camp out into the darkness. He
carried a big, old-fashioned lantern to guide my footsteps, though the
walk through the steadily-falling snow was not a long one.
Presently we came to a series of long, wood-built houses, windowless
save for some small apertures high near the roof, standing behind a high
stockade before which Cossack sentries, huddled in their greatcoats,
were pacing, white, snowy figures in the gloom.
My guide uttered some password, which brought two sentries at the door
to the salute, and then the great gates opened and we entered a big,
open space which we crossed to the bureau, a large, low room, lit by a
single evil-smelling petroleum lamp. Here I met a narrow-jawed,
deep-eyed man in uniform--the prison governor, to whom I presented my
permit.
He called a Cossack gaoler, a big, fur-clad man with a jingling bunch of
keys at his waist, and I followed him out across the courtyard to one of
the long wooden sheds, the door of which he with difficulty unlocked,
unbolted, and threw open.
A hot, stifling breath of crowded humanity met me upon the threshold, a
foetid odour of dirt, for the place was unventilated, and then by the
single lamp high in the roof I saw that along each side of the shed were
inclined plank benches crowded by sleeping or reclining women still in
their prison clothes, huddled side by side with their heads against the
wall, their feet to the narrow gangway.
"Prisoners!" shouted the gaoler in Russian. "Attention! Where is one
four nine five seven?"
There was a silence as I stood upon the threshold.
"Come," cried the man petulantly. "I want her here."
A weak, thin voice, low and trembling, responded, and from the gloom
slowly emerged a female figure in thick, ill-fitting clothes of grey
cloth, unkempt and ragged.
"Move quickly," snapped the gaoler. "Here is someone to see you!"
"To see me!" repeated the weak voice slowly. Next moment, the light of
the lantern revealed my face, I suppose, for she dashed forward, crying
in English: "Why--you, Mr Trewinnard! Ah! save me! Oh! save me! I
beg of you."
And she clung to me, trembling with fear.
It was the girl Luba de Rosen! Alas! so altered was she, so pale,
haggard and prematurely-aged that I scarcely recognised her. Her
appearance was dejected, ragged, horrible! Her fair hair that used to
be so much admired was now tangled over her eyes, and her fine figure
hidden by her rough, ill-fitting prison gown, which was old, dirty and
tattered. I stared at her, speechless in horror.
She was only nineteen. In that smart set in which her mother moved her
beauty had been much admired. Madame de Rosen was the widow of a
wealthy Jew banker, and on account of her late husband's loans to
certain high officials to cover their gambling debts, all doors had been
open to her. I recollected when I had last seen Luba, the night before
her arrest. She had worn a pretty, Paris-made gown of carnation
chiffon, and was waltzing with a good-looking young officer of the Kazan
Dragoons. Alas! what a different picture she now presented.
"Luba!" I said quietly in English, taking her hand as she clung to me.
"Come outside. I am here to speak with you. I want to talk with you
alone."
The gaoler, who had had his orders from the Governor, relocked and
bolted the door, and taking his lantern, withdrew a respectable distance
while I stood with Luba under the wooden wall of the prison wherein she
had been confined.
"I have followed you here," I said, opening my capacious fur coat and
throwing it around the poor shivering girl. "I only arrived to-night.
Where is your mother? I must see her at once."
She was silent. In the darkness I saw that her white face was downcast.
I felt her sobbing as I held her, weak and tearful, in my arms. She
seemed, poor girl, too overcome at meeting me to be able to speak. She
tried to articulate some words, but they became choked by stifled sobs.
"Your mother has been very ill, I hear, Luba," I said. "Is she better?"
But the girl only drew a long sigh and slowly shook her head.
"I--I can't tell you--Mr Trewinnard!" she managed to exclaim. "It is
all too terrible--horrible! My poor mother! Poor darling! She--she
died this morning!"
"Dead!" I gasped. My heart sank within me. The iron entered my soul.
"Yes. Alas!" responded the unfortunate girl. "And I am left alone--all
alone in this awful place! Ah! Mr Trewinnard, you do not know--you
can never dream how much we have suffered since we left Petersburg. I
would have preferred death a thousand times to this. And my poor
mother. She is dead--at last she now has peace. The Cossacks cannot
beat her with their whips any more."
"Where did she die?" I asked blankly.
"In here--in this prison, upon the bench beside where I slept. Ah!" she
cried, "I feel now as though I shall go mad. I lived only for her
take--to wait upon her and try to alleviate her sufferings. Now that
she has been taken from me I have no other object for which to live in
this dreary waste of ice and snow. In a week I shall be sent on to
Parotovsk with the others. But I hope before reaching there that God
will be merciful and allow me to die."
"No, no!" I exclaimed, my hand placed tenderly upon the poor girl's
shoulder. "Banish such thoughts. You may be released yet. I am here,
striving towards that end."
But she only shook her head again very mournfully. Nobody is released
from Siberia.
As we stood together, my heavy coat wrapped about her in order to
protect her a little from the piercing blast, she told me how, under the
fatigue and exposure of the journey, her mother had fallen so ill that
she one day dropped exhausted by the roadside. One Cossack officer,
finding her unconscious, suggested that she should be left there to die,
as fully half a dozen other delicate women had been left. But another
officer of the convoy, a trifle more humane, had her placed in a
tarantass, and by that means she had travelled as far as Tulunovsk. But
the officer in charge there had compelled her to again walk, and over
that last thousand miles of snow she had dragged wearily until, ill and
worn out, she had arrived in Yakutsk.
From the moment of her arrival she had scarcely spoken. So weak was
she, that she could only lie upon the bare wooden bench, and was ever
begging to be allowed to die. And only that morning had she peacefully
passed away. I had arrived twelve hours too late!
She had carried her secret to her grave!
I heard the terrible story from the girl's lips in silence. My long
weary journey had been all in vain.
From the beginning to the end of poor Madame's illness no medical man
had seen her. From what she had suffered no one knew, and certainly
nobody cared a jot. She was, in the eyes of the law, a "dangerous
political" who had died on the journey to the distant settlement to
which she had been banished. And how many others, alas! had succumbed
to the rigours of that awful journey!
I walked with Luba back to the Governor's bureau, and in obedience to my
demand he gave me a room--a bare place with a brick stove, before which
the poor sad-eyed girl sat with me.
I saw that the death of her mother had utterly crushed her spirit.
Transferred from the gaiety and luxury of Petersburg, her pretty home
and her merry circle of friends, away to that wilderness of snow, with
brutal Cossacks as guards--men who beat exhausted women with whips as
one lashes a dog--her brain was at last becoming affected. At certain
moments she seemed very curious in her manner. Her deep blue eyes had
an unusual intense expression in them--a look which I certainly did not
like. That keen glittering glance was, I knew, precursory to madness.
Though unkempt and ragged, wearing an old pair of men's high boots and a
dirty red handkerchief tied about her head, her beauty was still
remarkable. Her pretty mouth was perhaps harder, and it tightened at
the corners as she related the tragic story of their arrest and their
subsequent journey. Yet her eyes were splendid, and her cheeks were
still dimpled they had been when I had so often sat at tea with her in
her mother's great salon in Petersburg, a room decorated in white, with
rose-du-Barri furniture.
In tenderness I hold her hand as she told me of the brutal treatment
both she and her fellow-prisoners had received at the hands of the
Cossacks.
"Never mind, Luba," I said with a smile, endeavouring to cheer her,
"every cloud has its silver lining. Your poor mother is dead, and
nobody regrets it more than myself. I travelled in haste from England
in order to see her--in order to advise her to reveal to me a certain
secret which she possessed."
"A secret!" said the girl, looking straight into my face. "A secret of
what?"
"Well," I said slowly, "first, Luba, let me explain that as you well
know, I am an old friend of your dear mother."
"I know that, of course," she said. "Poor mother has frequently spoken
of you during her journey. She often used to wonder what you would
think when you heard of our arrest."
"I knew you were both the innocent victims of General Markoff," I said
quickly.
"Ah! then you knew that!" she cried. "How did you know?"
"Because I was well aware that Markoff was your mother's bitterest
enemy," I answered.
"He was. But why? Do you know that, Mr Trewinnard? Can you give me
any explanation? It has always been a most complete mystery to me.
Mother always refused to tell me anything."
I paused. I had hoped that she would know something, or at least that
she might give me some hint which would serve as a clue by which to
elucidate the mystery of those incriminating letters, now, alas!
destroyed.
"Has your mother told you nothing?" I asked, looking earnestly straight
in her face.
"Nothing."
"Immediately before her arrest she gave to Her Imperial Highness the
Grand Duchess Natalia certain letters, asking her to keep them in
safety. Are you aware of that?"
"Mother told me so," the girl replied. "She also believed that the
letters in question must have fallen into General Markoff's hands."
"Why?"
"I do not know. She often said so."
"She believed that the arrest and exile of you both was due to the
knowledge of what those letters contained--eh?" I asked.
"I think so."
"But tell me, Luba," I asked very earnestly, "did your mother ever
reveal to you the nature of those letters? I am here to discover this--
because--well, to tell the truth, because your friend the Grand Duchess
Natasha is in deadly peril."
"In peril, why? Where is she?"
In a few brief words I told her of Natalia's _incognita_ at Brighton,
and of the attempt that had been made to assassinate us both, in order
to suppress any knowledge of the letters that either of us might have
gained.
"Our own sad case is on a par with yours," she declared thoughtfully at
last. "Poor mother was, I think, aware of some secret of General
Markoff's. Perhaps it was believed that she had told me. At any rate,
we were both arrested and sent here, where we should never have any
opportunity of using our information."
"You have no idea of its nature, Luba," I asked in a low voice, still
deeply in earnest. "I mean you have no suspicion of the actual nature
of the contents of those letters which your mother gave into Natalia's
care?"
The girl was silent for some time, her eyes downcast in thought.
At last she replied:
"It would be untrue to say that I entertain no suspicion. But, alas! I
have no corroboration. My belief is only based upon what my dear mother
so often used to repeat to me."
"And what was that?" I asked.
"That she had held the life of Russia's oppressor, General Markoff, in
her hand. That she could have crushed and ruined him as he so justly
deserved; but that for motives of humanity she had warned him of
repeating his dastardly actions, and had long hesitated to bring him to
ruin and to death."
"Ah! the brute. He knew that," I cried. "He craftily awaited his
opportunity, then he dealt her a cowardly blow, by arresting her and
sending her here, where even in life or in death her lips would be
closed for ever."