THE WOMAN FROM SIBERIA
At last there was a movement within. Halting footsteps approached the
gates, and a man's voice, hoarse and weak, demanded: "Who is there?"
"It is Yossof," Anne exclaimed. "How comes he here alone? Where is my
mother, Yossof?"
I started as I heard that. Her mother was alive, then, though Anne had
said she could not remember her, and Treherne had told me she died soon
after her arrest, more than twenty years back.
"She is within and safe; Natalya is with her," came Yossof's quavering
voice, as he labored to unbar the gates. We heard him gasping and
groaning as if the task was beyond his strength, but he managed it at
last. The great doors swung open, and he stood leaning against one of
them. In the chill morning light his face looked gray and drawn like
that of a corpse, just as it had looked that first time I saw him on the
staircase at Westminster. On the weed-grown path beside him lay a
revolver, as if he had dropped it out of his hand when he started to
unbar the gates.
"What has happened, Yossof?" Anne asked urgently.
"Nothing; all is well, Excellency," he answered. "I rode and gave the
word as the order was, and when I reached the town the madness had
begun, so I did not enter, but came on hither. My horse was spent, and
I found another, but he fell and I left him and came on foot. I found
none here save the Countess and Natalya; the others had fled, fearing an
attack. So I closed the gates and kept guard."
"God reward thee, friend; thou hast done well, indeed," Anne said, and
moved on to the house.
I felt a twitch on my sleeve, and Mishka muttered in my ear.
"Count our men in and then see the gate barred. We shall be safer so. I
will look after Yossof, and find also what food is in the house for us
all. We need it sorely!"
So I sat in my saddle beside the gateway, waiting till the last of our
laggards had come in. I saw Loris lift Anne from her horse and support
her up the short flight of wide stone steps that led up to the house.
An elderly peasant woman hurried out to meet them, and behind her
appeared a weird unearthly figure; a tall woman, wearing a kind of loose
white dressing-gown. Her gray hair was flying dishevelled about her
shoulders; and her face, even seen from a distance as I saw it now,
appeared like some horrible travesty of humanity. The wide open eyes
were sightless, covered with a white film; the nose was flattened and
distorted, the lips contracted, while the other features, forehead and
cheeks and chin, were like a livid lined mask, grotesquely seamed and
scarred.
The "Thing"--I could not think of it as a human being at that
moment--flung out its hands, and shrieked in French, and in a voice
that, though shrill with anguish, was piercingly sweet and powerful.
"They have come,--but they shall never take me again; at least they
shall not take me alive. Anthony--Anthony! Where are you, my husband?
Save me! do not let them take me!"
Anne hurried towards her, but with a scream she turned and sped back
into the house, and some one pushed the door to, so I saw no more; but
for some minutes those dreadful screams continued. They sounded almost
like the shrieks of Yossof's horse when the wolves were on him.
The men had all ridden in and were muttering to each other, crossing
themselves in superstitious fear. They seemed scared to approach the
house; and I believe they'd have stampeded back into the forest if I
hadn't slammed the gates and barred them again.
"It is not good to be here, Excellency," stammered one. "This place is
haunted with ghosts and devils."
"Nonsense," I answered roughly. "Brave men you are indeed to be
frightened of a poor mad lady who has suffered so cruelly!"
By judicious bullying I got them calmed down a bit; a Russian peasant is
a difficult person to manage when he's in a superstitious funk. Mishka
joined me presently, and we marched our men round to the back of the
house, and set them foraging for breakfast. Fortunately there was plenty
of food; the place seemed provisioned for a siege. I stood about,
watching and directing them. I didn't feel in the least hungry myself,
only rather dazed.
A hand fell on my shoulder, and I found Loris beside me.
"Come and eat and sleep, my friend; we have done well so far. Mishka
will take charge here."
He looked almost as fresh and alert after that tremendous night we'd
had, as if he'd just come out of his bedroom at Zostrov, when we joined
him in a big dilapidated dining-room, where he'd planked some food and a
couple of bottles of wine on the great oaken table, though I was as big
a scarecrow as Vassilitzi, who was as used up as if he hadn't been to
bed for a week.
He had dropped his flippant manner, and was as cross and irritable as an
over-tired woman.
"Think of these _canaille_ that we feed and clothe, and risk our lives
for!" he exclaimed half hysterically. "We left twenty of them here, when
Anna and I started for Zizscky yesterday,--twenty armed men. And yet at
the first rumor of danger they sneak away to the woods, and leave their
charge, that they had sworn to defend, so that we trusted them. And it
is these swine, and others like them,--dastards all!--who clamor for
what they call freedom, and think if they get their vote and their Duma,
all will go well. Why should we throw our lives away for such as these?
We are all fools together, you and I and Anna. And you," he turned
towards me, "you are the biggest fool of us all, for you have not even
the excuse that is ours! You have no stake in this accursed country and
its people. _Nom du diable_, why do you act as if you had? You are--"
"Calm yourself, Stepan," Loris interposed. "Go and sleep; we all need
that. And as for your cowardly servants, forget all about them. They are
worth no more. Go, as I bid you!"
His level voice, his authoritative manner, had their affect, and
Vassilitzi lurched away. He wasn't really drunk; but when a man is
famished and dead-tired, two or three glasses of wine will have an
immense effect on him; though one glass will serve to pull him together,
as it did me, to a certain extent anyhow. I was able to ask Loris about
that horrible apparition I had seen.
"Yes, she is the Countess Anna Pendennis, or all that remains of her,"
he answered sternly and sadly. "You have only seen her at a distance,
but that was sufficient to show you what Siberia may mean to a
delicately nurtured woman. If she had only died--as was given out! But
she did not die. She worked as a slave,--in the prison in winter, in the
fields in summer. She had frost-bite; it destroyed her sight, her face;
it made her a horror to look upon. Yet still she did not die, perhaps
because her mind was gone, and strength lingers in mad creatures!
"Yossof told all this. He was her fellow prisoner, and he made his
escape two--no, three years or more, since. He made his way here, and
Anna was good to him; as she is good to every creature in adversity.
Until then she had always believed that her mother died at her birth;
but when she learned the truth, she would have moved Heaven and earth to
deliver her. It was accomplished at last; the Tzar was induced to sign
an order for the release of this mad and maimed woman. Just when all
hope seemed lost the deliverance came; and the wreck that remains of the
Countess Anna Pendennis was brought here,--less than three months ago;
and--"
He broke off as the woman servant Yossof had spoken of as Natalya
hurried into the room and unceremoniously beckoned him out. He rose at
once and followed her, but turned at the door.
"Get some sleep while you can," he said, nodding towards a great couch
covered with a bear-skin rug. "None will disturb you here for a few
hours; and we shall have either to fight or to travel again ere long."
I sat for a minute or two, trying to think over the long tragedy that he
had summed up in so few words, and wondering where Anthony Pendennis
was. Surely he should have been here with his wife and daughter; and yet
no one had mentioned him, and I had had no opportunity of asking about
him,--had, in fact, forgotten his very existence till these last few
minutes.
But consecutive thought was impossible, and I gave up the attempt, as I
stumbled to the couch and fell fast asleep.