I.

Tobolsk, though a Siberian metropolis, is really a very pleasant place

to pass a winter in. Like the western American cities, where everybody

has made his money easily and spends it easily, it positively bubbles

over with bad champagne, cheap culture, advanced thought, French

romances, and all the other most recent products of human industry and

ingenuity. Everybody eats _pate de foie gras_, quotes Hartmann and

Herbert Spencer, uses electric bells, believes in woman's rights,

possesses profound views about the future of Asia, and had a grandfather

who was a savage Samoyede or an ignorant Buriat. Society is extremely

cultivated, and if you scratch it ever so little, you see the Tartar.

Nevertheless, it considers itself the only really polite and enlightened

community on the whole face of this evolving terrestrial planet.

The Davidoffs, however, who belonged to the most advanced section of

mercantile society in all Tobolsk, were not originally Siberians, or

even Russians, by birth or nationality. Old Mr. Davidoff, the

grandfather, who founded the fortunes of the family in St. Petersburg,

was a Welsh Davids; and he had altered his name by the timely addition

of a Slavonic suffix in order to conciliate the national

susceptibilities of Orthodox Russia. His son, Dimitri, whom for the

same reason he had christened in honour of a Russian saint, removed the

Russian branch of the house to Tobolsk (they were in the Siberian

fur-trade), and there marrying a German lady of the name of Freytag, had

one daughter and heiress, Olga Davidoff, the acknowledged belle of

Tobolskan society. It was generally understood in Tobolsk that the

Davidoffs were descended from Welsh princes (as may very likely have

been the case--though one would really like to know what has become of

all the descendants of Welsh subjects), if indeed they were not even

remotely connected with the Prince of Wales himself in person.

The winter of 1873 (as everybody will remember) was a very cold one

throughout Siberia. The rivers froze unusually early, and troikas had

entirely superseded torosses on all the roads as early as the very

beginning of October. Still, Tobolsk was exceedingly gay for all that;

in the warm houses of the great merchants, with their tropical plants

kept at summer heat by stoves and flues all the year round, nobody

noticed the exceptional rigour of that severe season. Balls and dances

followed one another in quick succession, and Olga Davidoff, just

twenty, enjoyed herself as she had never before done in all her

lifetime. It was such a change to come to the concentrated gaities and

delights of Tobolsk after six years of old Miss Waterlow's Establishment

for Young Ladies, at The Laurels, Clapham.

That winter, for the first time, Baron Niaz, the Buriat, came to

Tobolsk.

Exquisitely polished in manners, and very handsome in face and bearing,

there was nothing of the Tartar anywhere visible about Baron Niaz. He

had been brought up in Paris, at a fashionable Lycee, and he spoke

French with perfect fluency, as well as with some native sparkle and

genuine cleverness. His taste in music was unimpeachable: even Madame

Davidoff, _nee_ Freytag, candidly admitted that his performances upon

the violin were singularly brilliant, profound, and appreciative.

Moreover, though a Buriat chief, he was a most undoubted nobleman: at

the Governor's parties he took rank, by patent of the Emperor Nicholas,

as a real Russian baron of the first water. To be sure, he was nominally

a Tartar; but what of that? His mother and his grandmother, he declared,

had both been Russian ladies; and you had only to look at him to see

that there was scarcely a drop of Tartar blood still remaining anywhere

in him. If the half-caste negro is a brown mulatto, the quarter-caste a

light quadroon, and the next remove a practically white octoroon, surely

Baron Niaz, in spite of his remote Buriat great-grandfathers, might well

pass for an ordinary everyday civilized Russian.

Olga Davidoff was fairly fascinated by the accomplished young baron. She

met him everywhere, and he paid her always the most marked and

flattering attention. He was a Buriat, to be sure: but at Tobolsk, you

know----. Well, one mustn't be too particular about these little

questions of origin in an Asiatic city.

It was at the Governor's dance, just before Christmas, that the Baron

got his first good chance of talking with her for ten minutes alone

among the fan palms and yuccas in the big conservatory. There was a seat

in the far corner beside the flowering oleander, where the Baron led her

after the fourth waltz, and leant over her respectfully as she played

with her Chinese fan, half trembling at the declaration she knew he was

on the point of making to her.

"Mademoiselle Davidoff," the Baron began in French, with a lingering

cadence as he pronounced her name, and a faint tremor in his voice that

thrilled responsively through her inmost being; "Mademoiselle Davidoff,

I have been waiting long for this opportunity of speaking to you alone,

because I have something of some importance--to me at least,

mademoiselle--about which I wish to confer with you. Mademoiselle, will

you do me the honour to listen to me patiently a minute or two? The

matter about which I wish to speak to you is one that may concern

yourself, too, more closely than you at first imagine."

What a funny way to begin proposing to one! Olga Davidoff's heart beat

violently as she answered as unconcernedly as possible, "I shall be

glad, M. le Baron, I'm sure, to listen to any communication that you may

wish to make to me."

"Mademoiselle," the young man went on almost timidly--how handsome he

looked as he stood there bending over her in his semi-barbaric Tartar

uniform!--"mademoiselle, the village where I live in our own country is

a lonely one among the high mountains. You do not know the Buriat

country--it is wild, savage, rugged, pine-clad, snow-clad, solitary,

inaccessible, but very beautiful. Even the Russians do not love it; but

we love it, we others, who are to the manner born. We breathe there the

air of liberty, and we prefer our own brawling streams and sheer

precipices to all the artificial stifling civilization of Paris and St.

Petersburg."

Olga looked at him and smiled quietly. She saw at once how he wished to

break it to her, and held her peace like a wise maiden.

"Yes, mademoiselle," the young man went on, flooding her each moment

with the flashing light from his great luminous eyes; "my village in the

Buriat country lies high up beside the eternal snows. But though we live

alone there, so far from civilization that we seldom see even a passing

traveller, our life is not devoid of its own delights and its own

interests. I have my own people all around me; I live in my village as a

little prince among his own subjects. My people are few, but they are

very faithful. Mademoiselle has been educated in England, I believe?"

"Yes," Olga answered. "In London, M. le Baron. I am of English

parentage, and my father sent me there to keep up the connection with

his old fatherland, where one branch of our House is still established."

"Then, mademoiselle, you will doubtless have read the tales of Walter

Scott?"

Olga smiled curiously. "Yes," she said, amused at his _naivete_, "I have

certainly read them." She began to think that after all the handsome

young Buriat couldn't mean really to propose to her.

"Well, you know, in that case, what was the life of a Highland chieftain

in Scotland, when the Highland chieftains were still practically all but

independent. That, mademoiselle, is exactly the life of a modern Buriat

nobleman under the Russian empire. He has his own little territory and

his own little people; he lives among them in his own little antiquated

fortress; he acknowledges nominally the sovereignty of the most orthodox

Czar, and even perhaps exchanges for a Russian title the Tartar

chieftainship handed down to him in unbroken succession from his

earliest forefathers. But in all the rest he still remains essentially

independent. He rules over a little principality of his own, and cares

not a fig in his own heart for czar, or governor, or general, or

minister."

"This is rather treasonable talk for the Governor's palace," Olga put

in, smiling quietly. "If we were not already in Tobolsk we might both,

perhaps, imagine we should be sent to Siberia."

The Baron laughed, and showed his two rows of pearly white teeth to the

best advantage. "They might send me to the mines," he said, "for aught I

care, mademoiselle. I could get away easily enough from village to

village to my own country; and once there, it would be easier for the

Czar to take Constantinople and Bagdad and Calcutta than to track and

dislodge Alexander Niaz in his mountain fortress."

Alexander Niaz! Olga noted the name to herself hurriedly. He was

converted then! he was an orthodox Christian! That at least was a good

thing, for so many of these Buriats are still nothing more than the most

degraded Schamanists and heathens!

"But, mademoiselle," the young man went on again, playing more nervously

now than ever with the jewelled hilt of his dress sword, "there is one

thing still wanting to my happiness among our beautiful Siberian

mountains. I have no lovely chatelaine to help me guard my little feudal

castle. Mademoiselle, the Buriat women are not fit allies for a man who

has been brought up among the civilization and the learning of the great

Western cities. He needs a companion who can sympathize with his higher

tastes: who can speak with him of books, of life, of art, of music. Our

Buriat women are mere household drudges; to marry one of them would be

utterly impossible. Mademoiselle, my father and my grandfather came away

from their native wilds to seek a lady who would condescend to love

them, in the polite society of Tobolsk. I have gone farther afield: I

have sought in Paris, Berlin, Vienna, St. Petersburg. But I saw no lady

to whose heart my heart responded, till I came back once more to old

Tobolsk. There, mademoiselle, there I saw one whom I recognized at once

as fashioned for me by heaven. Mademoiselle Davidoff,--I tremble to ask

you, but--I love you,--will you share my exile?"

Olga looked at the handsome young man with unconcealed joy and

admiration. "Your exile!" she murmured softly, to gain time for a

moment. "And why your exile, M. le Baron?"

"Mademoiselle," the young Buriat continued very earnestly, "I do not

wish to woo or wed you under false pretences. Before you give me an

answer, you must understand to what sort of life it is that I venture to

invite you. Our mountains are very lonely: to live there would be

indeed an exile to you, accustomed to the gaieties and the vortex of

London." (Olga smiled quietly to herself, as she thought for a second of

the little drawing-room at The Laurels, Clapham.) "But if you can

consent to live in it with me, I will do my best to make it as easy for

you as possible. You shall have music, books, papers, amusements--but

not society--during the six months of summer which we must necessarily

pass at my mountain village; you shall visit Tobolsk, Moscow,

Petersburg, London--which you will--during the six months of holiday in

winter; above all, you shall have the undying love and devotion of one

who has never loved another woman--Alexander Niaz.... Mademoiselle, you

see the conditions. Can you accept them? Can you condescend of your

goodness to love me--to marry me?"

Olga Davidoff lifted her fan with an effort and answered faintly, "M. le

Baron, you are very flattering. I--I will try my best to deserve your

goodness."

Niaz took her pretty little hand in his with old-fashioned politeness,

and raised it chivalrously to his trembling lips. "Mademoiselle," he

said, "you have made me eternally happy. My life shall be passed in

trying to prove my gratitude to you for this condescension."

"I think," Olga answered, shaking from head to foot, "I think, M. le

Baron, you had better take me back into the next room to my mother."